


Burning Legion II: A Ripple In Time

by Mysdrym



Series: Burning Legion [3]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, F/M, Romance, Sequel to Burning Legion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 21:49:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 33
Words: 65,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5432039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mysdrym/pseuds/Mysdrym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just when Amy thought the fight for her world was something she could wrap her head around, everything begins to shift and change, and she's left without a clue and without a world...again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Where We Stand

When the Burning Legion swept across my world, obliterating countless lives and even blotting out the sun with dark, thick clouds, I was seventeen.

Before they came, I cared about clothes and celebrities and what my best friend Bethany thought about the latest episode of Vampire Diaries. I was a B student, and I didn't do any sports. I was the kind of face that just became a part of the crowd as soon as I stepped into it. People didn't expect me to give speeches or do anything so spectacular with my life that I'd be remembered for generations to come. I was fine with that, though. I was normal. Average.

And I loved every minute of it.

But then I… I'm still not sure why I did it, but I decided to get help. I crossed worlds, was chased by demons, and had my hopes crushed over and over and over.

In Azeroth, I made friends with heroes and villains alike, and we found a path back to my world, to earth. We fought against impossible odds, and we won.

Well, kind of.

I mean, there's still demons and stuff. But things are getting better!

Sort of.

Maybe a little.

Not really.

As the demons' numbers dwindle, I've found that the old hatreds and biases and greed that's always plagued humanity has found our situation comfortable enough to rear their heads.

I'm twenty now. It seems like such a short time, but so much has happened. I think I say that a lot, but it's pretty much true every time.

You see, the Legion, when they came, set up their base near the north pole. From there, they worked their way down, tearing through the northern hemisphere. They'd cloaked themselves with some sort of magic so that we couldn't see them, and it was like ghosts descending on towns, wiping them off the map before anyone could even get word to others. At first. I guess that attack strategy must have worked in other worlds, but they didn't consider how hard it would be to eradicate the bigger cities. Or maybe they wanted us to know they were coming. Those things are called demons for a reason. They act the part.

In the end, though, they underestimated our ability to survive. They didn't realize that there would be people who would give their lives so that the rest of us could live. They underestimated our ability to learn.

This guy in Germany, for example, figured out that you could see the demons if you used infrared goggles. He managed to post it to youtube before he was killed. I never encountered any succubi, but I guess they were a large part of the force that overtook Asia? Well, this South Korean woman figured out that if you could drown out their voices, they were basically just any other crazy with a whip. And hooves. And…well, they were a lot easier to kill when you weren't frikkin' enthralled by them. She sacrificed herself so that her kids could get away and spread the word. Their names are going down in history as heroes, now.

While their discoveries did help humanity as a whole, in the end…

Officially—with a few small exceptions—the northern hemisphere has become a dead zone, a wasteland. There used to be one hundred and ninety something countries in our world. Officially, there's less than fifty now. Most of them are in South America and southern Africa. Places the demons hadn't reached yet.

Some people are saying that until we can completely repel the demons and do a thorough sweep, no countries should be written off.

The people thinking along those lines, however, are becoming fewer and fewer as their opposition grows stronger. I'm not saying the other side is bad, because I  _know_  things are rarely black and white, but they want to redraw the map. It's like a new age of discovery. For them, they don't see why the majority of the human population should be confined to less than half of the landmass of our world. It makes sense; it does.

And I think in an ideal world, it wouldn't be so bad if they did redraw the maps.

I mean, with the spells from Azeroth, there's no such thing as language barriers anymore, so it's not like the conquering people would have to teach any stragglers or holdouts of survivors their language. Just cast a spell, and they can argue all they want.

The problem is really dumb, if you think about it. Humans are territorial. For example, I'll use the U.S., since that's where I'm from. Our population, pre-Burning Legion was over three hundred million or something. Now people are guessing there might be five hundred thousand of us left, scattered across the continent.

And that's the optimistic view.

That's a lot of land that's not being used. That's a lot of space that could be restored, cultivated, used to keep the rest of the world going. I don't think people have a problem with that part. What they have a problem with is what it's gonna be called.

Why do we even need countries at all? We're all people. We're all fighting the Legion, fighting to survive. Why can't we just be humans?

I doubt I'll ever get real answers to questions like that, but in the end, people are starting to squabble over what places will be called. Over which governments get to control them. The U.S. isn't alone, either. All the survivors of countries who fell are now having to face other people coming in and claiming their corners of the world for others.

Territorial disputes have broken out in former Texas and Egypt, which is actually a forefront of the fight against the demons. It's a 'quest hub' in the wasteland, if you will. There's a few others like it—New York City proved to be as durable as all those end of the world movies always portrayed it to be—and so far people have been mostly tiptoeing around what's going to happen with them. After all, you don't say 'fuck you' to the people leading the assaults against the monsters threatening to destroy you.

Sorry for the cursing, I do try not to, but, well, the people I'm around tend to swear a lot.

Not an excuse, but still.

Back to the dismal. Smaller countries are trying to expand their territories, and then the bigger countries that are left are trying to make sure they stay bigger than the smaller ones. It's…we're fighting each other instead of the real enemy. Over land. Land that belonged to people who were murdered horribly.

Like I said, skirmishes have started, but the one place that hasn't had any trouble, that hasn't had any overzealous explorers marching out and planting flags, is Russia. My friend, Vsevolod, V for short, is a mage from Russia, and he says that when people do get there, they're gonna find a thriving society. He says there's nothing that can hold them down, but at the end of the day, I know he's worried.

He and a few others tried to lead a reconnaissance team into Russia two years ago, right after we'd killed the big bad running things in our world. They weren't able to get very far, and none of the ones who made it back ever talk about it. It's known as one of the remaining demonic strongholds, like the ones in Sweden/Norway, Greenland, and Alaska.

Oh, on a lighter note: Finland and Canada survived.

Yeah. Dunno how exactly, what with the demons plowing through them, but they're still there—they're the official exceptions that I was talking about earlier and the reason some people wanna wait to redraw the maps, because maybe we'll come through and places like Andorra or Macedonia or something are hanging in as well.

Regardless of how, those two countries have developed a rep for being serious bad asses.

Bad asses who are, at least in the Canadians' instance, surprisingly polite. Unless you're a demon.

Anyway. So we're starting to have problems with people stepping on other people's toes in regards to territories.

I wish I could say that was the extent of our issues.

It's not.

The allies I got us in Azeroth are starting to fight among themselves, too. Well, I guess that's deceptive. They've always been fighting. But it was getting better. And then it got worse.

And then it got way worse.

Like, they've had skirmishes and all out blood baths in  _our world_. We've been trying to maintain that Earth is neutral territory, but, well…

It's not.

Not anymore. People are beginning to choose sides—Horde or Alliance. Most countries that had to dig their nails in to hold on to a vestige of their former lives prefer the Horde. Those guys are a Victory or Death bunch, and that's the attitude we need to reclaim our homes.

Countries who didn't go toe to toe with infernals and felguards tend to prefer the Alliance. It's not that they suck in a fight or anything—some of the best fighters I know are Alliance—but they're more tactful? That's not the right word…

Hmm….how do I explain it? The Alliance focuses more on relief and repairs. The Horde tends to be fight, fight, fight, move on when there's nothing left to kill. The Alliance helps defend and rebuild.

I'm not saying either faction is  _always_  that way, but yeah.

And there's been some pretty bad stuff going on in Azeroth. Like, genocidal stuff.

The Horde's leader, Garrosh Hellscream, went crazy. Some rumors say he figured that it was only a matter of time before all of Earth sided with the Alliance and wiped the Horde from the maps—I don't think we'd do that, but who knows at this point—so he took measures to make sure the playing field would be even.

Out here, it's hard to say if that's the real reason. I mean, rumors get twisted and I've found that humans are kinda arrogant overall. We always think things are about us. Maybe Mr. Hellscream's plans was in the works before my world came into the picture.

Regardless, he did some pretty awful stuff. So some heroes thwarted his schemes and took him to trial. And he escaped. I don't know the details, really. I've been a bit busy with my own world.

But  _everyone's_  pissed off. Like some Alliance blame the Horde, saying they helped him since he was their leader? Though, after what he did to his own allies, the Horde is pretty mad he got away, too.

He fled to some trippy time warp place and people are saying he escaped into the past.

I'd say good riddance, if not for the fact that he could alter the present if he changes the past. If he rewrites Azeroth's history, what will happen to my world?


	2. A New Hurtle

So. I finally found out what happened in Russia. It's a bit of an explanation to get there, so bear with me.

But yeah.

Um.

We're really kinda fucked.

There I go with swearing again. Elizabeth would cheer me on. She's a gamer girl from…where did she say? Utah? She traveled a really long way to fight the Legion in New York City. She's a hunter, and her mighty pet is a Chihuahua named Tinkerbelle. Don't be deceived by its size; that dog is vicious. I wish I could tell you that she's doing well, but I haven't seen her in almost a month. I think she went with some others to Australia to try to persuade them not to openly declare themselves Alliance?

She's a Horde fan girl with a rather brazen personality, so I don't know if she'll actually help that situation…

In case you're wondering, I said a lot about what's been going on in the worlds, but not a lot about what's been going on for me. And I promise, this does sort of tie into the whole Russia thing.

Right now, I am in Wales. It's pretty post apocalyptic here. I mean, there's not really any people left. There's a few strongholds in England, so they've already really evacuated everyone to those. From there, it's a portal roulette to wherever you wanna go, be it in our world or in Azeroth or even Outland. Some people do wanna come back home, for sure. Others are just ready to start over.

The demonic presence here is pretty much gone. Yay, right?

I mean, there's still a rogue felhunter or whatever that you might come across—part of the reason why everyone's still evacuated, and partially because even with all the people from Wales and Scotland, England's only a tiny fraction of what it used to be, like the U.S., so there's not really an issue of overcrowding.

But the truth is, I'm not out here because of demons. If I wanted to be fighting back the monsters, I'd still be in Sweden or helping V out in his latest attempt to get people to go with him to reclaim Russia. Not to knock anyone else, but he is one of  _the_  most loyal countrymen I've ever seen. He is determined to see Russia back on its feet.

About that.

That's like our biggest defeat right now—barring the whole our world got roflstomped, of course. See, we had a portal to Moscow. We had people going in. But the 'incident' happened—like I said, anyone who might know won't talk about it—and we ended up having to close the portals and abandon that outpost.

From there, we just focused on working our way north and now, like I said, it's just Alaska, Norway/Sweden, Greenland, and Russia that are really bad. And people are fighting every second of every day to reclaim them.

But, I'd just come back to Finland from a southern portion of Sweden, where the fighting's still pretty bad—by the way, I'm still not a fighter-fighter. I sneak in, see their numbers, sneak out. Sometimes I sabotage operations, too. Typical rogue stuff.

Well, we haven't been making much progress. We're starting to think that they might have a few smaller bases like the one that was in the Arctic Circle in the areas that they still own, where they're getting limited reinforcements. The truth is, we're not sure.

And we're losing so many people trying to find out.

But we'd just finished defending our base for like the nth time that week when Brath gets all grumbly. We're still together, in case you were wondering. And he still hates everyone in every world except for me.

He's such a ray of sunshine.

However, there's always a few people that—I don't know if he can smell them coming because he's a dragon or what—when he realizes they're where we are, make him even worse. My friend Fizz, mostly. I guess he doesn't like that I have a goblin savior. He doesn't seem to understand the history that I have with that little green, scowly creature, but Brath thinks he should be the only hero I ever need.

He mumbled something along those lines when I got mad at him for hating Fizz about a year ago. I am so not kidding. It's kind of cute, but still. He needs to accept that I have friends other than him.

According to him, he has and that's why he hasn't eaten them yet.

Not gonna lie, it's really weird having a boyfriend who can legit eat people he doesn't like by turning into a giant scaly lizard. Dragons are some special snowflakes, for sure.

Anyway.

So Brath got all grumbly. I figured either it was Fizz or Brath's little brother, Wrathion. See, the Black Prince found that if his brethren were brought to my world, it was far enough away that the whispers of the old gods of Azeroth were lost to them. Like, most of them are still totally crazy, but they're free of the manipulations, and their corruption seems to be leaving them slowly. It'll be years before we know for sure, but there's hope.

That's actually one thing people don't know much about that will eventually need to be addressed when they redraw the maps. North and South Dakota are kind of the new territory of the Black Dragon flight.

At least they promised they wouldn't eat any survivors they came across.

Though…they didn't exactly say they'd help them, either.

…

Sometimes it's better not to think too much on things.

Being one of the few remaining dragons of his flight, Brath—Brathrion is his full name, though I always trip over that second r, so he tells me to just call him Brath—gets visited from his flight's leader from time to time, to help with dragon stuff. I think if he thought he could legitimately take out his little brother so that he'd have some peace, he would.

In fact, I think that's why Wrathion has been sending his minions to us lately, instead of coming in person. Who knows?

I'm so off topic.

The person coming to visit us turned out to be Senta'ri, a troll hunter we—I—befriended during the fighting to take back my world. He's pretty awesome, and he's pretty much unofficially made Earth his home. I guess that works out, from what I hear was happening to the Darkspear back in Azeroth.

However, Senta'ri's call was not a social one. See, after I fell out of the sky near Fizz's home and he learned that I couldn't understand any of the languages he was versed in, Fizz, lovable little goblin that he is, figured out how to make a spell that let us all talk to each other. So, pretty much everyone's been using that spell, and it makes it so…well, technically, we're all still talking different languages. We just understand each other.

Senta'ri had actually sought us out looking for Fizz, because his news involved that spell. However, Fizz and some other goblins are in the process of fortifying that old trash island out in the Pacific as a special base for them—or just a city. It's hard to tell with them, sometimes.

Anyway, it took some prodding, but he finally explained what the problem is. The Forsaken have developed a way to block the language spell. Now they can talk amongst themselves in Gutterspeak, and we can't understand them.

Apparently, they were doing just that at a base in…where did he say he was? Brazil? There's a sort of fall back base in Brazil now. It's far enough away from the fighting that people can relax and regroup and all that there before heading back north to keep fighting.

While he was there, he stumbled across these two Forsaken, talking all quiet like in the back of a bar. Well, they didn't realize that the troll knew their language, and they were talking about gathering recruits.

Yeah.

The undead were basically talking about gathering  _our_  dead. There's been rumors about it ever since they made contact with us, but now apparently they have some hardcore operations underway. And they've been focusing on more isolated areas that don't get much attention anymore, since the demons are gone.

A.k.a. Wales, among other places. I hear rumors that they've been scouring Japan and a few other places, as well, mostly islands, for people to bolster their numbers with. I'm skeptical about Japan, though, because that's a major base of operations for defenses against demonic attacks coming from Russia.

That's why I'm in Wales. It's quiet here.

Perfect for grave robbing.

So far, it hasn't been too bad. We haven't seen any Forsaken or demons. It's a little eerie passing through towns and seeing the broken buildings, but nature's starting to make a comeback. It's been roughly two years since we got the sun back, and as you walk down the street, you can see grasses peeking up from cracks in pavement and vines and stuff winding over broken walls.

And there's animals.

I don't know how many species went extinct when the Legion came, but they didn't get everything. I even saw a couple squirrels chasing each other on some old trees, earlier. Most of the trunks were charred and teetering, but there's little sprouts coming up around them and one even had its own leaves budding on a few scraggly branches.

If I was really deep, I'd say something about rebirth and all that, but really, it's just nice to see. I bet if we got a few druids out here, we could speed up the process, too.

Two other friends came with us. I guess five is sort of the magic number in Azeroth, for less pressing quests. There's Neesera, the sweetest draenei shaman you will ever meet who is always optimistic and an engineer, and Hendric, a dwarf warrior who likes to perpetuate the drunken dwarf stereotype hardcore. I saw him fight sober once, and he could barely hold his axe, so we always try to make sure he's got plenty of alcohol on hand.

He brews his own stuff, too. It burns the throat like you wouldn't believe, but I'm developing a fondness toward it—in case you're wondering, things like legal drinking ages are kind of trivial these days, as there are  _much_  more important things to worry about.

Oh, if you're curious, Brath's our 'tank'. It's kind of easy for a giant dragon to keep enemies' attention, you know? Besides that, Brath always makes a point of pulling creatures' attention away from any warriors or paladins or whatever who try to actually tank for us. Because of him, finding a group can be a little painful, as healers tend to avoid us, since he causes such chaos.

Ah, well.

Neesera puts up with him, somehow.

Bless her heart.

So, yeah. We went to Wales looking for body snatchers.

But what we found?

It's so,  _so_  much worse.


	3. A Forsaken Little Village

So Wales must have been really beautiful before the Legion came. I mean, it is now, even after everything that's happened. If I'd been here for any other reason, I'd have thought it amazing and hopeful.

But then, if I'd been here for any other reason, we probably wouldn't have come across these containers of glowing green liquid.

See, we were heading down some old broken road, when we noticed a town up ahead. Now the way we'd been doing things was that if we came to an formerly inhabited area, then Brath, Senta'ri, and I would scout ahead, with him flying overhead and Senta'ri and me sneaking in on the ground. We'd been through two villages without seeing any signs that anyone had been there in a long time when we came to this one. It was a kind of small place—we found a sign that said _Pontllanf_ -. The rest of it was cut off, and we didn't have a map to check the full name.

Anyway, so Neesera and Hendric set up camp a good ways off from town. A long time ago, she made these mechanical squirrels to scout out New York City. It's a long, long story, but basically we've upgraded them a bit. They don't rely on satellites, but rather radio waves. We thought about making them communications devices, but we all have these magical rocks for that, so it's really not necessary.

Senta'ri and I each took two with us so that we could send them into places we couldn't reach or didn't want to risk ourselves. By the time we got to the outskirts of the village, we figured that Neesera already had her equipment set up at camp to view feedback, so we went ahead in. We could have just asked her on the crystals, I suppose, but we try not to make too much noise until we know that no one's around.

Well, Senta'ri and I split up almost instantly. He headed north while I went south. I'd been walking maybe ten minutes when I found the first crates. There were dozens. And this wasn't like some stock pile people had tried to get together to fight the Legion with. These boxes were new, wooden, and completely unmarked.

I wandered around to check for any sentries, and then turned on one of the squirrels. I set it on one of the crates and set about opening the one next to it. The squirrel tried to scamper off twice—the programming isn't the best—but finally it settled down. Actually, it did that just about the time that I managed to get the crate open.

Inside, there were four canisters like I had never seen before. Definitely Azerothian make, though. Their world has an odd sort of signature, if that makes sense? There's a certain intricacy to their simpler objects.

Anyway. I could see a bit of a green glow from beneath the caps, so I started to lift one of the canisters to get a better view. However, I'd barely been able to lift it enough to see that it was some weird liquid sloshing around in there that was causing the glow, when my crystal started buzzing.

I was pretty sure I'd had it off, but it just kept buzzing, and I was afraid the vibrations were gonna make me drop the canister, so I set it back and then pulled out the crystal. As soon as I held it flat on my palm, Neesera's voice was snapping out instructions.

"Retreat! Leave the squirrel and get out of there! We don't need to see more!" Her voice cracked, both from odd dissonances that occasionally interfered with magical communications and fear.

Even as I thought to tell her that I'd be on my way soon, I realized that there was a shadow over my hands.

Jerking my head up, I stared at a Forsaken leaning against the other side of the crate. Despite the hole recesses where her eyes were supposed to be, I could feel her watching me.

I'd only really dealt with two Forsaken before. Once was a healer in Booty Bay, who had wordlessly tended to my injuries, despite assuming I was from an enemy faction. The second one was Mr. Blackheart, a maniacal sociopath of a warlock who was best friends with Brath. Even so, he didn't make a habit of visiting us.

Despite my first encounter with their kind being surprisingly pleasant—though it did lead to some complications with the Alliance present during the time that I was healed—I've heard nothing but terrible things about the Forsaken as a whole, so when I saw this woman, I didn't doubt that whatever was about to happen between us, it wasn't going to be good.

"Come with me." Her voice was harsh, and it rasped as though the mere breath used to form the words were trying to flee her presence.

I took a step back.

She frowned. One of her hands slipped out of view behind the crates, though she kept the other one across the far side. "Look…miss. There's no need for violence." She finally pushed herself up and reached a bony finger down to tap one of the lids. "Especially not around these."

Before I could reply, Neesera's squirrel launched itself at the Forsaken, the same time that Neesera yelled through the crystal. "Get out of there no—"

A blade slammed into my crystal, shattering it, and I barely had time to dodge backwards as the Forsaken cleared the crates with an eerie, nimble ease. Her joints moved a bit too fluidly, like she couldn't feel the usual pains that warned people to stop lest they pull a muscle or dislocate something.

With a breath, I threw down a smoke bomb and dodged past her. It was my hope that she's assume I was retreating the way I'd come, and go looking for me that way, as I slipped a bit further into the village.

I really hoped I wouldn't have to fight her. After seeing what Mr. Blackheart was capable of, I had no desire to be up against another corpse.

Unfortunately, she wasn't alone. And she must have had some way to talk to her allies as well, for every corner I rounded seemed to have a Forsaken of some kind, watching the streets. I tried to sneak past one, but they had some method for detecting stealth.

He was relentless, too. I could dodge most of his attacks, but he caught me off guard with some sort of charge. He nearly had me, when I managed to smack my dagger into the back of his head and put some distance between the two of us again.

I rounded another corner, but I could already hear him recovering and shouting for help. There was no way I was going to get out of there by just running. So instead, I swung up onto one of the rooftops, using a stack of crates as a launch point.

Once I was up there, I waited for the Forsaken who had nearly caught me to go around the back of the building. He assumed I'd slipped around the other corner already and sprinted after. While he was heading in that direction, I launched myself off the roof onto another one.

I made it back to the streets and darted past a few more buildings—most likely they'd been shops at one point. I took shelter in one of the smaller ones and decided to wait out whatever hunt might be going on for me.

Well, that had been my intent.

You see, I have this awful habit of getting caught on a whim and doing things that don't always make the most sense. For example, I ran through a demonic portal not knowing where it even led. Another time, I decided to befriend a dragon, not knowing anything about dragons.

For the most parts, my blundering ways have actually turned out pretty good.

So when, after a few hours, I peeked out of my hiding spot and noticed that there were quite a few Forsaken guarding this one building in particular, I got curious.

Before I go on, you should know that there are several different types of rogues. Combat rogues use weapons and fight with finesse, using carefully calculated strikes to quickly take down their enemies. Assassination rogues do exactly what their name implies. They sneak around and kill people. Then, lastly, there's subtlety rogues. We scout things, gather information, and sometimes do a bit of trap disarming and sabotage.

Don't get me wrong. A great subtlety rogue can take out enemies easily. I am not great. Good, but that's as much as I would laud my abilities. I might be better, but the truth is I really don't want to hurt people. That must sound hypocritical, seeing as I give information to others so that _they_ can hurt people, but meh.

So yeah. As a subtlety rogue, I am pretty good at disappearing without leaving a trace that I was there. I'd messed up earlier because I was in shock and a little panicky, but at this point in time, I'd had time to calm my nerves and gather my wits.

And those wits decided that I should see what was in that building before I headed back to the others. After all, the Forsaken were likely not looking for me in this area.

I hoped.

So I snuck out the back of the building I was hiding in and through a few back streets, avoided a few guards—nothing like the ones causing the ruckus earlier—and found my way to the back of the building across the way after about…thirty minutes? I was being careful. After all, I didn't want to run into any other rogues.

The long story short, I made it to the building, only to find that all the windows were boarded up. I couldn't say if that had been done by the former inhabitants or the current ones. They did look a little dusty, but…meh. It wasn't important.

What was important, was seeing inside.

I thought about taking off a few boards, but I didn't want to open a window that someone was sitting beside or something. So instead, I watched the guards out front for another fifteen-ish minutes. Then, I used a few rogue tricks to distract them and slipped inside.

Once I was in, I have to say: I so wasn't prepared for this. Honestly, I don't know what I expected. Headquarters? Angry corpses plotting the demise of my world with charts and manifests?

What I found was a laboratory.

Several walls had been knocked out of place to make the entire interior a single space, and it was filled with tables cluttered with beakers and books and notes and all manner of research-y stuff.

There were Forsaken present, too. They were working with vials of the green liquid, heads bent a bit lower than the usual Forsaken hunch as they focused their attention so completely.

I was so enthralled with what they might be doing that I nearly didn't hear one of the guards coming in to check on them. Luckily, he paused to get something off the wall just around the corner. That was all the warning I needed to slip into hiding behind an old, half-teetering bookshelf.

The guard came in and spoke in a strange language that sounded hideous. They really had found a way to block the language spell.

However, what caught my interest—and horror—even more so than that was what he'd stopped to get before coming in through that door.

A gas mask.

Whatever they were working with, it was dangerous.

And I'd just waltzed in, exposing myself like an idiot.


	4. For Russia

So. Let's start with some good news.

I'm not plagued.

I didn't really even know that was a possibility, but apparently that was what Neesera was freaking out about?

So, yeah. There's that at least.

After my panic attack in the science lab, well, let's just say I hadn't lost that first rogue quite like I'd thought. She had apparently been tailing me, hoping that I would lead her to all my friends, since I obviously wasn't alone.

I'm a really bad rogue.

But that's not the point. That bookshelf I was hiding behind? Well, it was a bit away from the wall and while I'd thought it was perfect to hide behind, I'd forgotten that that kind of pipelines my options for escape as either forward or back. And it leaves me open from behind.

I didn't even know the other rogue was there until I found myself teetering toward the floor, blackness swooshing over my vision.

I had some nightmares where I was swimming in ooze and stuff. They were pretty messed up. Imagine skeletons and death and destruction and giant martini umbrellas. I don't…I'm not gonna try to interpret that.

However, when I did wake up, I found myself in a mildly intact hotel room with Neesera, Senta'ri, and Hendric. Brath was nowhere to be seen. If I had to guess, I doubt these Forsaken have aerial units—most likely they don't want to draw attention to themselves.

I was a little surprised that he hadn't burned half the village down to save me, but then…well maybe he didn't know I was missing. He doesn't exactly use his crystal like the rest of us do.

As I was sitting up, Neesera was beside me in a second, asking me if anything hurt and if I felt 'odd' anywhere.

I was a little confused by that part, but this raspy, familiar voice interrupted her fretting. "I already told you, we're not working with the plague here."

Turning my head, even as Neesera muttered something about trusting them, I saw the same Forsaken woman from before. That rogue. Her head was turned slightly as though she was watching me, and when I looked into those empty eye sockets, she smirked at my cringe.

"I took them out myself," she commented, not moving from where she leaned next to the door. She flipped one of her daggers through the air, catching it by its point. "I'll let them know you're all awake now."

Without another word, she slipped out of the room. I heard a lock click into place behind her. Though I wondered briefly if I could pick it, I somehow doubted that she was our only guard.

Well, while the whole ordeal was puzzling, I didn't have much time to think about it. Neesera and Senta'ri both hopped onto my bed, sitting near me and leaning in so that they could take turns interrupting one another as they tried to explain how the Forsaken manufactured the plague and all that in Azeroth. Senta'ri told me about the Undercity and its moat of glowing green goop. Neesera explained something called the Wrathgate incident, where some of the Forsaken betrayed the Alliance—and Horde, Senta'ri was quick to point out—by plaguing them instead of helping fight someone called a Lich King.

Anyway, I've said this before, but there aren't a lot of stories circulating around where the Forsaken swoop in and save kittens from trees or help little old ladies across the street…unless they're helping said old lady across the street to their lab to experiment on her.

So the fact that we were trapped in an unknown location by a bunch of crazies who like experimenting on people wasn't exactly reassuring.

Now, the whole while that Neesera and Senta'ri had been chattering away, Hendric had been really quiet. Granted, the dwarf doesn't often make a point of talking a lot. He's kind of stoic like that.

But when Neesera and Senta'ri started suggesting we try to break out or contact Brath and see if he could break us out?

He punched the wall.

Well, he probably would have swung his axe into it, if our weapons hadn't been taken from us.

It was kind of funny, in a twisted sort of way. His fist went through the wall. And then, when he finally managed to pull it back, another, very boney and dead hand followed his through the hole and flipped us the bird.

So of course I went over to check it out. I guess we'd been holed up next to the guards' break room? I could see a dozen of the undead just hanging out in the room, not particularly doing anything—perhaps because they knew they were being watched.

That makes me wonder, though. Do they actually need breaks? I mean, it's not like they can get tired or anything, can they? Maybe it's a psychological weariness? Do they ever eat or drink just out of habit or to try to remember what it was like?

Before I could think to say anything to them, one of them moved a poster over the hole to block our view.

Hendric walked over to the far wall and waited for the rest of us to come over before he began speaking. Mostly, he directed his words at me, since he knew I wasn't quite so biased. "Look, lass. The Forsaken are some mean buggers, don't get me wrong. They blighted a whole town back in Azeroth. However, I've been ta South Shore. I've seen the damage." He shifted his weight a little. "This isn't the same. When we were being led through here…I seen plants growing. There's no way they'd be growing so close to the plague. It kills everything, and ye be a damned fool to not notice it." He glared at the other two. "There been vines and grasses all through this area. I even saw one of those little yellow flowers."

"Dandelions?"

"Aye."

I considered what he'd said. However, it was Senta'ri who replied, "Ah seen dis befora. Lissen, mon. Dey got all kindsa plague in Tirisfal 'n dere still be grasses dere. It ain' so simple ta tell."

"And I'm tellin' ye, I've been through Tirisfal," Hendric snapped. "I'm a damned explorer, lad. I've seen every inch of Azeroth…save that new continent in the south…" He looked a little wistful for a split second before continuing. "Anythin' growin' in Tirisfal is sickly like, ye see. It ain't so healthy. I ain't a shaman or anythin', but the stuff here's got a freshness to it. It ain' on the verge of dyin'. It's new."

Neesera hesitated and then wandered to the window. It had been boarded up, but it had been done from the inside. With the nails rusting away, it was easy for her to pull off one of the planks. As she leaned it against the wall, she looked out and jumped. There was a Forsaken standing near the window, a large mace resting on one of his shoulders as he stood with his other hand on his hip.

"I am not running away," Neesera stated, staring at the guard with wide eyes.

I had to say, they _really_ didn't want us running away.

The Forsaken hadn't made an attempt to respond and Neesera hesitated, peeking out just a little, at the ground. Then her gaze went back to the Forsaken. He hadn't moved. "I would like to pick that flower."

Silence followed.

It wasn't until Neesera started to try to get a second board off the window so that she could lean out that our guard stepped forward, picked something and held it out to her. She took the tiny stem in her delicate fingers, and in a blink the guard was back to his earlier pose, as though he'd never left it.

Neesera frowned as she examined the little purple flower. I'm not great with plants, but I think it was a violet. Or maybe not. It was purple.

Well, even as Neesera went to commune with it or whatever—later she did express that the reason she was having trouble getting a read on all the nature-y stuff was because being in close proximity to something as unnatural as a large group of Forsaken threw off her connection with the elements—the door to our room opened, and I couldn't believe who stepped through that door.

I also couldn't believe he _fit_ through that door.

Okay, you know those action movies where there's that stupidly ripped guy that makes all the guys you know in real life look like dweebs, even if they can, like, bench 200 lbs? The one that's basically a walking wall, shooting guns and shouldering bazookas like they weigh the same as a puppy and stuff?

That's V.

The Russian loyalist I was telling you about.

Except he uses magic.

That's right. The buffest guy I know flings spells at people. There's still kind of a stigma here on Earth that spell casters like mages—we don't allow warlocks unless they're from Azeroth and even then they're treated very poorly—are weak and easy to take out. Not because of their spells or anything. They kick ass with magic. I guess most mages are kind of scrawny, though? Like, they're stereotypically the kids who got bullied in school and stuff for being small. So some people are still kind of dicks to them.

Honestly though, I don't think people would try to fight V one on one. Like, even if you got close enough to interrupt his spells, he can still punch you hard enough to crack your skull.

I think.

I mean, he has to be able to with all of those muscles.

They're not just there for show.

Anyway! It was V standing there. With the Forsaken.

He gave me a broad grin when he saw me and waved. "Amy Ford. I should have known any human rogues here would have to be you." He walked over to the bed nearest the door and sat down. I heard the frame creak under him. "You must tell me; what are you doing here?"

The Forsaken rogue from earlier was leaning in the doorway again, though she didn't bother to close it. I saw a few other undead walk by. And then a living human. He was talking to one of the Forsaken scientists in a hushed tone and didn't even afford our room a glance.

V has the patience of a saint. He waited for us to gather the scattered bits of our blown minds without so much as tapping his toes. Finally, I sat down next to him. The bed felt like it was at a bit of an angle.

"Look, we heard there were…" I paused, glancing at our guard. "You know some of the rumors going around…"

"The body snatcher rumors. I am familiar with them, yes." The rogue in the doorway scoffed, but said nothing when V gave her a cross look. As he turned back to me, he arched an eyebrow. "As you can see, there are no bodies being snatched."

I leaned toward him. "But what's going on here? It can't be good—"

"On the contrary," V shook his head. "The Forsaken are possibly the only people who can help us with Rasseeya."

I should point out, even with the language spells, people still have accents. Like, I would have an American accent speaking Japanese to someone from Japan or an American accent speaking Portuguese to someone from Portugal. And then I hear them with a Portuguese accent or Japanese accent speaking English. It's really odd and Fizz said he was going to figure out how to fix it someday, but it's not really pressing enough for anyone to go out of their way to do at the moment.

Anyway, V must have known English before the spell, because he speaks pretty clear, but I can still really hear his accent when he says Russia and stuff like that.

I don't mean to get so off topic.

I remember that I fish-mouthed for a moment before finally asking, "Why them?"

"Because we're already dead," replied the Forsaken rogue in the doorway. She was playing with a few locks of limp, dead hair, clearly bored.

When I looked back at V, he ran a hand down his face. "Amy…and friends…" He nodded to each of my companions in turn, even pausing to inspect Cat, Senta'ri's pet, who was curled up and watching us from the corner. The giant animal's fur was dark and blended into the shadows so well that I hadn't even noticed her there. "This is not a pleasant tale, but if you can keep it to yourselves, I will tell you."

We all nodded.

For a moment, it seemed like he wasn't going to say anything. Then, he motioned for us to follow him and stepped out of the room. He walked down the hall and out into the foyer—the hotel was hardly that now that we could see the rest of the building. It looked like it had been made into a makeshift barracks, though what it had once been, I couldn't say.

There were quite a few living people here, mingling with the Forsaken. Most of them looked like scholars or scientists, though. Mages, basically. Almost all of them spoke with Russian accents, too.

V led us out front, onto the street. He walked into the middle of it and then turned to us, waiting for us to stop near him. With one hand, he pointed up to the sky. "Tell me, Amy, what do you see?"

I was puzzled, but complied. I half expected Brath to be bearing down on us or something. However, all there was overhead was the dark gray clouds scattered across the horizon. If I looked west, I could see them tapering off with hints of blue breaking through, but there were more to the east. They looked thicker there, like a storm was coming in.

I frowned as I realized that they'd been that way since I'd come to Wales. I could remember commenting to Brath and Senta'ri that I'd hoped we would outrun the storm, only to forget about it when it never came.

"In the Western hemisphere, the clouds have mostly receded. It _is_ receding here, but much slower." V sighed and tugged on one of his sleeves. "And, you may not know this, but it is colder here than it should be. It is colder everywhere than it should be. That is why crops have been struggling and why we are digging ourselves more and more into debt with Azeroth."

"I don't get it," I replied slowly. I will never be recorded as one of the great thinkers of my time. "The demons brought the clouds and as we push them back—"

"No, Amy." With a halfhearted laugh, V held up a hand to keep me from arguing. "They did not bring this. This was our doing." He paused, looking back toward the east. "In all the stories people used to scare others out of nuclear war, they say that a hundred strategically placed nukes would send us into a global nuclear winter that would kill everything." Looking back at us, at me, he pointed toward the east. "This is what happens when you use only seventeen."

I felt light headed. "You mean, the U.S. attacked—"

"What? No," V laughed abruptly. "Amy, you are a good person, but you suffer the same as every other American. You are not the only people in the world." His sadness was replaced with an odd sort of pride. "They came down from the north to take us. Our cities were falling one after another. Rasseeya decided that if it was going to fall, we would do so on our terms. We did what we could to find their base in the northern wilds and bombarded it."

"With _seventeen_?"

With a shrug, V dismissed my dismay. "From what I am told, we could not quite find it. Better to be safe when smiting monsters, yes?"

"You started a nuclear winter!"

"I do not see why you are complaining," V frowned. "It is not like we bombed your country. And it is fairly localized. Another…" With a sigh he shrugged again. "It will go away. My people are used to the cold. We will persevere and rebuild Rasseeya better."

It was a bit much to take in. In all honesty, I'd never really considered what had made the clouds. If I'd been asked before this, I likely would have floundered and finally said that it was the demons' evil presence or something. But this…

"What about the radiation?"

"That is where the Forsaken come in," V nodded to the rogue, who was standing beside us. "They are helping us gather samples and find a way to neutralize the radiation so that it will not negatively impact the environment. It is a long road, but we are working."

"Be grateful you stumbled across this area instead of the one further west," the rogue offered, a hint of fake sweetness to her rasping voice.

Laughing, V nodded. "Here, we are manufacturing the solvent that will negate any harmful effects. You go fifty miles from here to the west, and you fill find where we are storing small amounts of nuclear waste to test on."

"I've heard some of the Forsaken there are already starting to glow."

The rogue really enjoys saying things for shock value. I'll get to that later.

"The Welsh are cool with you doing this?" I asked, suddenly inspecting the area with renewed interest.

"They are…not so much aware," V admitted, grimacing as though admitting such a truth was distasteful. "However, we need a place where the demons are not likely to attack, where people are gone, with plenty of space."

"There've gotta be dozens of countries you could go to."

"Yes, and we are in pretty much all of those dozens," V reached up and scratched his chin. "Now, Amy. I am telling you this because from what I have seen of you, if you or your friends decide you are going to do something, you do it. I cannot have you deciding to destroy this facility. I cannot have you bringing attention to this facility. What we are working on will benefit all of Earth, not just my people. It needs to be done."

"Then why does it need to be a secret?"

"For one, we do not wish the demons to get a hold of our nuclear studies." V started back toward the building. "When we were taking back Rasseeya, they managed to get a hold of one of our nuclear plants. We were able to stop them from firing most of the missiles, but not before they bombed Moskva. Those of us infiltrating the base were lucky. Otherwise, we'd have perished with the others in the city."

And there it was. The reason that we'd lost Moscow was…sort of our own fault. If we'd never split the atom, they wouldn't have been able to do that…

I felt a little sick, thinking about the people there. How many had survived through hell just to have _that_ happen?

A hand rested on my shoulder, dwarfing it, and I looked up at V. He grinned at me. "Also, you know how people react to anything nuclear. We would like to have this mess cleaned up before others find out just what we did. I don't want my people persecuted for making the rest of the world need sweaters for a few years." He stopped at the doorway leading in and directed one of the guards to get our weapons. "Now then, you will keep our secret, yes?"

I stared at him for a moment, wondering if people would really go after anyone from Russia, just because of what their government had done to try to stop the Legion. It broke my heart to realize that there were people who would.

"I won't tell a soul." The others echoed the sentiment. I think it would have been easier for them, anyway, as they didn't quite know about nuclear stuff the way people of my world did.

"Excellent!" V clapped his hands together, making a mini boom with the air caught between his hands. He smiled at the rogue with us. "I told you we would not have to kill them!"


	5. Split Up

So I gotta say, I don't really know what to do.

I mean, part of me wants to find some way to help Russia with its nuclear meltdown, but at the same time, I don't really see how I could help? I'm no scientist or undead who can walk around carrying toxic materials without it stopping my already un-beating heart.

It seems that the best I can do is help push back the Legion so that we have more resources to dedicate to such projects.

And maybe clear the Forsaken's name when it comes to all those body snatching rumors.

Well…

Actually, they don't seem terribly bothered by it. Some of them were even making jokes about digging up spare parts if the radiation got too bad, and part of me thinks that they're the ones who started those rumors to begin with. I don't really know what to make of them.

I've said this before, but a rather sadistic warlock is my real reference for them, along with all those horror stories, so I guess I always expected that they'd all be horrible monsters.

Maybe that's why it's even stranger that so many of them seem like normal people.

It's eerie.

Anyway, it seemed that we would not be needed to thwart some new evil bearing down upon our world. And that meant we might as well leave V and his fellow scientists to their own devices. We might have stayed longer, but I wanted to check on Brath.

It was weird because it seemed like, with all the stuff around the town, he would have come down to make sure I was okay, right?

So I was kind of worried.

And I think I offended this one Forsaken warrior, because I asked him if they'd shot down any dragons lately. He got all grumbly and said that they had some sort of mage spell cloaking the activities from the air, so Brath wouldn't have seen anything out of the ordinary.

However, it made me wonder. My crystal had been destroyed. Wouldn't he have cared that he couldn't get in touch with me?

At this point, I was starting to feel a little clingy—dumb, I know, but I wanted to know what had happened. Neesera was working on making me a new crystal, but it wouldn't be ready for a few days. Well, we'd decided to head back to where our camp had been to see if he was waiting for us there—wouldn't Brath have noticed that there was no one there and come looking for us?—when this human guy came running up to us.

He'd heard that I had been asking about dragons.

Apparently, earlier that day, they had seen Brath flying overhead, making a few lazy circles. However, while he was in the middle of one, just as they were wondering if they'd need to send some message up to him to see what he was doing, he'd abruptly stopped in midair. He'd hovered there for a minute and then taken off toward the north. From the sounds of it, he'd been going pretty fast.

It sounded really…weird.

Senta'ri made a joke that the Forsaken were sending us off on a wild goose chase so that they could keep Brath for themselves. Hendric noticed how pale that thought made me, and he nudged the troll to get him to shut up.

Well, we'd just reached our camp—after all, Brath could have come back by now—when out of nowhere, V comes charging after us. You'd think with the speed he was going and all that he'd be out of breath, but no. The man is beyond physically fit. He's like a god.

And I swear the ground shakes a little when his feet thud into it while he's running.

So not kidding.

Anyway, as seems to be my luck, we were not going to have a quiet evening of where's my lizard boyfriend.

Oh, no.

"Neesera! Your presence is required elsewhere," V had said once he caught up and loomed over the rest of us. When we looked puzzled, he frowned. "Something has happened to one of the portals? I do not know which one it is, but they are calling for certain people and you're on the list."

She stopped in her tracks, tilting her head. "What is the matter exactly?"

"They won't say."

"And how do you know I am needed?" Neesera crossed her arms, a feigned look of mistrust on her face.

He gave her a crooked grin. I should note, they stand eye level to each other. He's probably one of the biggest humans she's ever seen. However, with a shrug, he motioned to her. "We keep in touch with some in the quest hubs so that we get a heads up if there are exploratory parties heading our way. They forwarded the lists to us in case we knew any of the people on them."

With that, he cast a quick portal and then bowed toward it, peeking up to smile at Neesera. She started toward it and then stopped, one curl half twisted around her finger. "That is the portal to Stormwind."

"That is where they need you, miss."

It was weird. Neesera just stared at the portal for a moment. "You are sure it is me they wish for? If you are wrong, it will take me a month to get back here."

"Neesera Lightsong, draenei shaman. Former Peacekeeper of the Karabor Temple?"

She actually winced at that title. Of all the time I'd known her, it suddenly occurred to me that I'd never really talked to her about her past. She'd told me of Argus and Draenor before, but it had always been in such sweeping strokes. I knew of her people's history, but not hers.

With a little smile, she patted my head. "I will be in touch, Amy. Be safe."

And with that, she was gone.

I stared at the blurry image of Stormwind. "Why would they need a shaman to fix a portal?"

"I do not know," V shrugged, watching the spell blink out of existence. "The list had many who are not mages. All either present or former Peacekeepers."

"No others?" Hendric asked, head cocked.

Senta'ri stepped up as well, Cat pacing at his side. "What about de Horde?"

"I haven't heard anything about Horde groups being called back," V shrugged. As he did so, he rummaged through one of his pockets and pulled out a small crystal, similar to the ones we used to talk through. He ran his fingers over it and then it projected a list of names that he could scroll through with a wave of his finger, almost like he was using a smart phone.

Even as Hendric grunted and said something about asking people for updates, I realized that Neesera had left with my new crystal. So basically, I had no way of contacting anyone, much less Brath.

A four letter word or two may have left my mouth when I realized this.

However, when I explained why, Senta'ri had just patted my head and laughed, pointing out that Brath stayed in touch with Mr. Blackheart—that annoying warlock—and that Mr. Blackheart stayed in touch with him. If worse came to worst, the grapevine would be activated and we'd hear from him.

Well, V headed back into town and the three of us debated what we'd do. With our mounts we could head north, but I didn't know how far Brath had gone. We figured we wouldn't run into anymore Forsaken, as they'd said they were working more to the west.

With that, we checked our supplies and headed north, hoping that we'd meet Brath on his way back to us.


	6. All Mixed Up

So.

I feel like I start a lot of my thoughts with that lately. Maybe I do. That's not really relevant though.

See, apparently Azeroth is being invaded or something? Well, okay. What we've heard is pretty, what's the word? Vague? Sketchy? Some of it's lies, some of it is true, and from where we are, it's really hard to tell the difference.

But apparently Azeroth is being invaded again. My first thoughts were, 'Oh, God, the Legion is kicking their ass while they're down so that my world will just kind of collapse in on itself.'

Because, of course, everything is about my world, right?

But it's not the Legion, so yay for that.

It's the Horde. But not the Horde. The Horde from like thirty years ago? So it's orcs invading—which I guess they did before—a land they already tried to invade. And it's kind of the same orcs that did it before that are doing it now somehow? Except they're a different color?

I'm not gonna lie, I'm really confused. However, it's not just me! See, Hendric got word from Neesera and passed it on to me and Senta'ri. He didn't even want to at first. He'd gone off to the side when his crystal rang, for lack of a better word, and when he came back, he just looked like his head hurt. A lot.

So we made him tell us.

And then all three of us sat there, likely all looking equally puzzled.

And it's not like we can just turn to someone more knowledgeable and have them explain. Because there is no one. We haven't been able to get a hold of Neesera again, either.

Well, Hendric is very concerned. He actually lives in the southern human territories with his partner, Matt. When I asked when was the last time he saw Matt—I mean, I haven't seen Brath in a few days and I'm getting panicky—he just mumbled something about space and then it made me think that Brath might be the Hendric to my Matt. Like, I need him more than he needs me.

Anyway. I'm so off topic.

So Hendric was worried about Matt, saying something about the how the man couldn't fight his way out of a paper sack. He headed back to that village where we found the Forsaken, hoping to hit V up for a portal.

At that point, we were already two days north, but he told us that he'd call Senta'ri when he got there safe and sound. And he'd let us know when he had more information.

That night I ended up talking a bit with Senta'ri, and I learned that apparently Azeroth really can't get a break.

I knew a bit before, but…

I mean, I've heard mention of Lich Kings and old gods and stuff, but Senta'ri laid out a timeline for me. Holy crap. It's not like problem A happened and then thirty years later problem B happened. Most of them are only a few years apart. Their problems literally never stop.

And now that Garrosh disappeared, this is happening. Senta'ri said that he'd bet anything that 'burly bastard' had something to do with it. He said that they should have just locked him in an underground vault to starve.

I mean, crap. I've never seen him this angry.

Granted, with all the stuff I'd heard Garrosh doing, I can't really argue.

Oh, fun fact? Apparently those first Hordies who came to my world's rescue were unsanctioned.

Basically what happened was Mr. Blackheart went to his guild leader and told them what was going on. A guard heard and stopped the guild—because, like, the _whole_ guild was going to come—and told them they couldn't go. Orders from Garrosh Hellscream.

So what did they do? They went to a battleground and _somehow_ a bunch of supplies caught fire, so their battleground was horribly under-stocked. At the same time _someone_ heard a rumor that the Alliance was planning a huge attack. So they needed their supplies. Well, with this many Alliance crawling around, obviously the messengers would need protection, so it would have to be a group that went and came back.

So Mr. Blackheart was nominated to deliver the warning, with a few buddies covering him to make sure those dastardly Alliance didn't jump him on his way back to the battleground. And then he asked for a portal to Orgrimmar, but a mage in the guild accidentally used the wrong spell. Oh no, they ended up in Shattrath instead. Since it was the mage's fault, she went to deliver the message while the others got roped up in a weird Shattrath project that they simply _had_ to do since the remnants of the Black Flight were threatening them if they didn't do it.

Senta'ri was laughing his whole way through that story. But then I asked him how his guild was doing, and he got kind of quiet. I guess he was kicked out because he was inactive for so long? Which is bull shit, by the way. He's done so much for us out here. But I guess that doesn't count. While he's been here, Ripper and the others have been battling across some mysterious continent, fighting those giant panda bears or something.

I should keep better track of what happens Azeroth.

I told him if I had a guild, he could be in mine. He just patted my head and told me that I was too adorable to be a guild leader.

That's the first time he's ever said something like that, and I think I got flustered, because he laughed at me again. I mumbled that he shouldn't hit on me when we were trying to find my boyfriend.

That made him laugh harder.

He told me that I was a bit too scrawny and, well, human for his tastes. He just thought it was cute how I was trying to make him feel better and stuff.

Our conversation hit a bit of a lull for a while.

Then, out of nowhere, he asked me a question I'd never expected.

"Wat ya see in dat dragon a ya's, nehway?" When I simply blinked at him, dumbfounded, he shrugged, lacing his fingers over his stomach as he leaned back against Cat. "Everehbodeh always tiptoein' around dis topic, not knowin' how ta talk ta ya about it, but Ah figure what de hell, yeh? Ya know Ah be ya friend."

"Brath's not so bad."

"He always be threatenin' ta eat ya friends."

"No," I argued. "Well, maybe. But he doesn't mean it."

"Yeh, he does," Senta'ri let out a disbelieving laugh. "Ya rememba a year ago when Ah been askin' ya ta go wit' meh back ta de Echo Isles? When Ah said de otha trolls be lovin' ta meet ya?"

"And then you said plans changed last minute," I murmured. Honestly, I'd been a bit sore about that. I don't want to sound like a slacker, but I'd been excited about the thought of a few weeks of a break. To be able to sit back and learn about another culture without having to worry about demonic attacks and all…

So I'd been pretty upset when it was put off. However, Senta'ri had sent me a letter saying that he was sorry and that things had come up, making it a bad time for me to visit.

And I guess things really had come up? He'd been saying that there was fighting, but that the trolls could still show a guest a good time, when suddenly he'd changed his tune and said that perhaps the fighting _was_ a bit too much for the time being.

He held up his hand, waving his third finger. There was a small scar running around its base. "Ya dragon bit mah finga off when Ah told him dat, if he didn' want ta come, he could let ya outta his sight fa a bit. He said de next appendage Ah lose be a more impo'tant one."

"That…" I stared at him. Holy crap. What?

"Tell meh, when been de last time ya got a letta from Fizz? Or dat worgen, Eric?"

"It's…been a while. They're busy."

"Ah know fa a fact dey write ya evereh month." Senta'ri leaned forward, pointing at the ground with a long finger. "He be interceptin' ya mail. Fizz been askin' ya ta come visit him back in Booteh Bay. Did ya even know he went back to Azeroth? He been there fa almost a year now."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"Ameh, Ah don' want ya ta tink Ah tryin' ta ruin ya relationship a sometin', but Ah realleh don' see what ya see in him. It be like he tryin' ta make sure ya don' have aneh friends."

I sat there, not knowing what to say. Brath had always been a little grumbly around people, but I'd thought he was getting better. I mean, he's kind of a dick, but not…

Not like this.

When I was still in high school, my best friend, Bethany, got into a relationship with a real dick. He wouldn't let her go out anywhere, told her she wasn't worth anything, did everything short of actually hitting her.

It took me a month to compile a list of stuff to prove that he _was_ an abusive jerk, even if he hadn't laid a finger on her.

She'd finally dumped him, and it had taken her a long time to get over that. A few others and I would greet her everyday telling her that she looked great and stuff, and it was still a long time before she really believed it. He'd decimated her confidence.

One time, she'd told me that she was proud of me, because she knew I'd never be in a relationship like that. She knew that I wouldn't let anyone make me feel like less of a person.

I think she had a bit too much faith in me, because I've certainly felt like crap throughout my adventures—I'd rather not remember the time I was jealous of a twelve-year-old and thought that he was better at life than I was—but…

But it really bothered me how close _this_ conversation was to that one.

"Brath has always been there for me," I told Senta'ri. "Sure, he started off just wanting me to take off his reins, but after I did, he came back. He jumped through all sorts of hoops to save me. He even became…monogamous because I told him I didn't want to be in a relationship where my partner had others." I frowned. "And I'm still getting mail. I still hear from a dozen friends. Just before we left here, I got a note from Fluffy telling me about some adventures he's having with Ripper and Miksa in someplace called the Dread Wastes. A few days before that I got a note from Cisty. She and her friends are making an initiative to retake their home…Gnomer-something. I got a letter from Kelveris saying that he's coming back to Earth because things were finally dying down with Garrosh."

Senta'ri seemed genuinely surprised, like he'd expected me to say that no one ever talked to me anymore and that Brath was my only lifeline. The two of us sat there in silence for a moment. He drummed his fingers against his chin as I stared into our small campfire.

"Ah wonda what be makin' him cut ya contact wit' de ones he been intaceptin', den."

I shook my head. "I don't know, but when we find him, I'm gonna find out."


	7. Falling Apart

Fuck.

I hate cursing, but…that's all I can say right now.

On the one hand, I can almost be happy because, well…I found Brath. It actually took us a while—three weeks. Every day that went by, I kept thinking that maybe Brath had doubled back, and we'd missed him. After all, he might not have expected us to follow him, or he might have been doing a circular flight or…something.

Wales is a relatively small country, but it's huge when you're looking for one person, and he could have been absolutely anywhere. By the time we hit the coast, we weren't even sure if Brath would still be _in_ the country.

I was freaking out.

I wanted answers, and the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. My mind was working in circles, driving me crazy.

I'm glad that Senta'ri was there. My mind kept playing through all these different scenarios where demons had gotten Brath or something—or that maybe they'd gotten him a long time ago—and the longer the time drew on, the more I thought that something had better be wrong with him, because otherwise I was going to have to kill him for this.

We found him near the beach. He was in dragon form, and he was literally just sitting there, breathing fire at the waves and turning them into steam.

At first, despite everything, I was just so glad to see him, because he was in one piece. But then, I got really angry, especially when I saw what he was doing. I mean, really? He made me wait for three weeks so that he could play with water?

Really?

Surely he'd been up to other stuff while he was up here. When I looked down, I could see that the beach was a mass of footprints and tail swipes. He'd definitely been here most of the time.

Well, I started to kick my mount into a sprint when Senta'ri reached out and grabbed my reins. His brow was scrunched down, like he wasn't sure he trusted what he saw. Almost like he thought maybe this wasn't Brath.

My mind went straight to the Legion, of course.

After that, we approached carefully. When we got close enough that he could hear us easily—Senta'ri was still acting really cautious—I called out to him.

He didn't respond at first, instead smoke curled out of his mouth, vaporizing the latest waves. When I called to him again, he perked up.

He didn't change back into his human form, though.

"Amy, I take it the village was empty?"

"No, it wasn't." I murmured. When he swung his scaly head toward me, curiosity in his eyes—along with something else. It was a weird sort of…haze. Like he wasn't quite there. "It's not important, really. There's no merit to those rumors about the Forsaken."

"I suppose that's a happy reassurance to your graveyards," he let out a low laugh. He inspected me and then Senta'ri, cocking his head in that inhuman manner. "The others are gone? And you couldn't lose that one, too?"

Anger boiled up in me. I don't know how, but I kept my tone calm. "They had to go back to Azeroth." He abruptly lost interest, shrugged, and nestled down into the sand. "Why didn't you come back?"

"I figured you would call for me when it was time to leave," He stopped, sitting up again and twisting around until he faced me fully. Then, as an afterthought, he shifted to his human form and dug through his pockets. He pulled out the crystal and waved it. "Nothing."

"My crystal was destroyed."

"'n ya not answerin' mah calls," Senta'ri grumbled.

"You are not Amy," Brath retorted, frowning. He seemed to consider the flaw in his logic—and perhaps his complete and utter lack of respect for Senta'ri—and slipped his crystal back into his pocket. He started toward us. "Time to leave then, I take it? Where are we going? Back to fighting the Legion? I preferred Greenland, if I have a say in where we go."

He had reached his mount—of course we'd brought the creature with us. I reached out and grabbed his hand. "How can you act so nonchalant?"

"Hmm?" He frowned. When I didn't reply immediately he gave me an irate look. "You know I don't follow all that circular logic that spins around in those mortal heads of yours—"

"Ya be a mortal too, now," Senta'ri muttered.

Brath ignored him, literally picking up where he'd been cut off as soon as the troll finished speaking, "—so you'll have to explain."

"Really?" I couldn't keep my anger in anymore. "I have to explain how it's not cool that you disappeared for three weeks? Three weeks! That's how long it took us to find you! Three! Weeks!"

He blinked at me, his golden eyes widening with pure…shock.

At the time, I assumed it was because I was actually losing my cool. "And, while you're gone, I find that you've been threatening my friends? Like, serious threats? That you've been intercepting my mail? Acting like a legit, complete dick? Not just a jerk with people issues? What is _wrong_ with you?"

"Nothing!" He shouted the word, startling all of the mounts and Cat. He took a few steps back, eyes still wide. He stood there for a moment before bringing a hand up and running it through his hair. "Nothing."

"Then why?" I dismounted and stalked up to him, despite Senta'ri's hasty whispers to stay where I was. "Why were you gone for three weeks?"

"I didn't…know so much time had passed by." He seemed almost scared for a second before his usual arrogance—or a farce of it—swept over his features. "Forgive me. I'm used to time being rather meaningless in the long run."

I stopped. My mind was still stuck on that flicker of fear. Even so, I still couldn't stop myself. "Why would you go through my mail? Why threaten my friends?"

"You know how people exaggerate issues—"

"Fizz has been writing me monthly. I haven't heard from him in over a year. Eric's been writing me..."

Brath gave Senta'ri a most scornful glare—no doubt figuring he was the one who'd told me. I caught his chin and made him look at me. "Who else? What other friends of mine are you stopping me from talking to?"

"No one important," he muttered.

"You don't get to make that call," I hissed. I could see Bethany curled up by her window, the fight drained out of her after all that bastard of a boyfriend had done. I wouldn't be like that. Not ever. Not because of a guy.

"All they wanted to do was talk about Azeroth. Those were the only letters I took," Brath hissed, suddenly almost frantic.

"Which means you've been reading all of them to know that!"

"Remember what you told me? When we were first crossing the sea from Stormwind to Kalimdor?" He looked like he was pleading with me not be unreasonable. Like I was the one acting out of line. "You said it yourself. You don't care what happens to Azeroth." He began pacing. "I've been helping. You don't need to feel obligated to help them with their problems just because they helped you here. There's no need for guilt trips or—"

"Azeroth?" I couldn't follow his logic. "The last letter from Cisty that you so generously allowed through was all about Azeroth!"

"But _she_ wasn't asking you to go back!" He snapped, his fists clenching as he took a step toward me.

"And? That's what this is about?" I shouted back. "What's so bad with me helping my friends? With me seeing where they're from and—"

"Because I can't go with you." His voice wavered.

It was literally the first time I'd ever heard him sound genuinely terrified.

Just like that, the fight was gone from him. I stared at him. It was my turn to be shocked. "What?"

"I can't go back to Azeroth."

I frowned. "I know Wrathion threatened you, but we could always take it up with him and—"

"You don't understand," Brath's shoulders slumped and he looked around as though he were seeing his surroundings for the first time. Then, he was angry. The air around us seemed to heat up. "And what about what you said? What you promised! You said you didn't care what happened to Azeroth! That's why this has been okay," he motioned between the two of us. "They don't mind if you don't intend to interfere."

"Fuck, mon," Senta'ri whispered. I heard him rustling through his bags, but I didn't look toward him. I was too dumbstruck.

At first, I could barely follow what he was talking about. None of it was making any sense. But then, I thought back and it slowly began to sink in. I remembered him frying some animal so that I would eat it and then talking about how the earth was in pain. I remembered how I'd thought he looked like a killer, how he'd talked about someone—he'd never said who—told him that the earth hurt.

How he'd warned me not to argue with them.

And then I'd done the most despicable thing that I think I may have ever done. I practically gave whatever it was my blessing, so long as my world would be saved.

Then, just like that, I remembered Eric and his group, and how they'd explained to me why the Black Dragonflight were bad. They'd explained to me the Black Dragons' masters.

The old gods.

I guess my world wasn't a far enough away place to run to after all.


	8. Bouncing Around

If Brath ever sees Senta'ri again, he's probably going to kill him.

Heck, I feel like _I_ want to.

Did you know that you can summon someone without their consent? Because apparently you can. It's hard to do—harder still if you're a human from my world, what with our magic resistance and all—but if you have say, half a coven of warlocks that owes you for something you helped them with a long time ago, then it can be done.

See, Senta'ri being the awesome friend that he is, sensed danger, and, as I was talking with Brath, he was busy contacting one of his old warlock buddies from his guild. Just as I was telling Brath that everything would be okay and that we'd figure something out, I find Senta'ri's arm around my shoulders and then…

Igh.

I can't accurately express how uncomfortable being summoned is. Honestly, I don't think anyone likes it? Not even mages. I think they just pretend they do because otherwise they'd have to admit that the powers they're playing with are a bit daunting, even to them. It's so hard to explain, but while you're being summoned, it feels like you're not you anymore. Like, you've come apart at seams you never even knew you had, only to be pieced back together a few seconds later—it doesn't feel like seconds while you're being transported, but it is—and I've always had this innate terror that one day someone's gonna summon me, and they won't bring the full package to where they are. It's why I prefer to walk or fly or ride places.

I digress.

So Senta'ri called in favors to 'save' us from the crazy dragon.

That would have been well and good—I'd have still be really, really angry, but I wouldn't have been this pissed—if we hadn't been summoned to the middle of Orgrimmar.

I don't know if you're aware but, like I said, there was a bad war. Mr. Hellscream was deposed by Alliance who basically raided Orgrimmar. Now, the Horde may have a tenuous peace agreement with the humans of my world, but the thing is, we're still not really welcome in their cities, as it'd be easy for some to confuse us with Azerothian humans—apparently the elves have no trouble telling the difference. Yay for magical differences.

Regardless, even with Senta'ri vouching for me, I was taken into custody, just until my name could be cleared and all. See, as Senta'ri had made my world his home, he wasn't quite as credible as he used to be with his buds.

And that could have turned out okay.

Except I wasn't the only one in their dungeons.

Backtracking a bit, most of the Alliance who originally assisted me with saving my world were from the same guild. Apparently that same guild was the one to raid Orgrimmar, and they'd been allowed to leave. Except a few of them came back?

Only one was captured though.

Kelveris Duskleaf, leader of the Crusaders' Remembrance.

Even that might not have been so bad.

Except that as soon as he saw me led in, he waved furiously—despite his shackles—and then told them that we were old friends and that I was an honorary guild member.

That last bit was news to me.

After the orc and troll guards had left me—likely to rot—he shuffled over and tried to be all friendly-like. Well, I was in no mood for talking, but he was super cheerful. He kept asking me questions to which I would either glare his way sulkily or just grunt an answer and let him figure out if it was negative or affirmative.

Then, for the second time that day, an old friend looped their arm around my shoulders, and I was summoned away. Again.

If you've ever been summoned twice in one day, you'll know about the headaches. It's like the world is tearing at those seams you just learned you had, trying to figure out if maybe you weren't quite pieced back together correctly after all.

It is nauseating.

And of course, I didn't have time to really focus on that, because I was surrounded by warlocks, which is to say I was surrounded by fel magic. So it felt like demons all around—there actually were a few subjugated ones.

Kelveris told a few of the warlocks that they were horrible people, with a smile on his face, and they just told us to get out before they set us on fire for wasting their time.

So, I've been to Stormwind before. Long, long ago, Fizz sent me there, so that I could get help for my world. That's actually where and why I met Brath.

However, I didn't have much time to explore—read that as next to none—so when we stepped out into the sunlight, onto a gently sloping, grassy path, I was surprised. They call it the Mage District. If you didn't know about the warlocks—and ignore the constant rumblings from the explosions of spells gone awry—it looks really serene and peaceful.

Kelveris was frowning at it all as I took it in and told me that there was too many buildings. I told him that generally happened when one was in a city, and he insisted that he was going to take me by Darnasus at some point.

At least I'm better with names now.

Well, I told him that I needed to go back to my world, but even as he led me to this big tower in the middle of the district, grousing on and on about how I wasn't any fun and how I ought to stay and see the sights, say hello to some people, it occurred to me that just going back to my world wasn't going to help Brath.

He would still have those old gods whispering in his head. He'd still be…

Cursed or whatever it is.

I don't want to call him crazy because, I mean, the voices are real, right?

So it occurred to me that I needed to figure something out to help Brath.

What, I couldn't say, but I had a feeling that any answers would be in this world, not any other.

And so, staring up from the foot of that tower, I asked Kelveris if he knew anywhere I could stay the night. I started to tell him why, but…

The Black Dragonflight's situation is precarious. Wrathion isn't cursed, but the rest of the flight is. My world was supposed to be their haven. If people find out that it's not… There was a massive hunt to kill off all the remaining black dragons. I don't want to put a target on Brath's head.

So I didn't tell him why. I just said that I was tired from all the fighting and thought some rest would be…nice for a change.

The look he gave me.

It was like he understood what I'd just said way better than I ever could. He slung an arm over my shoulders and led me into the city, offering that maybe someday, we'd all be able to have a nice long break.

Even though the words were kind, just looking at him I could tell he didn't believe it.


	9. Standing Still

So if you hear a steady thumping noise, that's just me banging my head against the wall.

I've been in Stormwind two whole days. It's been two days of worrying about Brath and trying to find answers without tipping anyone off that I'm looking for them.

Which is impossible.

Maybe an epic rogue could do it, but I'm not that epic.

See, I've figured that I need to do one of two things. One, I need to ask some more experienced raiders about the old gods. If I do this, word will inevitably get back to someone who knows me that either I don't think they're worth asking for help or that I'm asking about old gods and since the people who know me know about my dragon lover, it won't take much for them to connect the dots. That'll make it open season on Brath.

Option two is going to Wrathion, since he's apparently immune to the old gods. Now, I did learn more about him. I know that he's immune to the old gods, even here in Azeroth, and I'm leaning towards hunting him down so that I can try to find out what he did and replicate the process on Brath. I could tell him that Brath wants to come home, not necessarily that he's hearing voices in my world.

The problem is that dragons are really smart. If I show up asking for a way to cure Brath, I'd wager Wrathion will know that it's not just because his bro wants to come visit him on occasion.

So it's a real conundrum. And I'd love to get someone else on this, but I just…don't know who to trust. I mean Kelveris is awesome, but his number one priority is to protect Azeroth. If I was a threat, he wouldn't hesitate to end me. He might shed a tear afterwards since we are friends, but he'd do what needed to be done.

If he thinks Brath is a threat, he'll take him out.

Unfortunately, not many people are in Stormwind.

Oh, I got a new communication crystal.

And I think I might have somehow joined the Crusaders' Remembrance. Because I have all their members' contact information and they all have mine. And random strangers keep whispering me things like, "Welcome along for the ride," and stuff. That's gonna be hell for my Horde contacts.

Also, I think Kelveris was trying to measure me for a shirt or something earlier.

I am so screwed.

Hendric is down with his partner, but said he might be heading to Stormwind soon. Neesera is heading to the Blasted Lands, but was saying she might be able to come up and see me before she has to go through the portal.

Oh!

So. I finally know what's going on. Kind of. Apparently the Dark Portal was hijacked, so mage portals are the only way to get to Outland at the moment. They might fix the Dark Portal later, I don't know. But instead of Outland, it's connected somewhere else.

Somewhere with orcs.

Who are not friendly.

They're invading and the draenei peace keepers have been called to deal with them at the source, as well as a bunch of war veterans. I guess the Horde and Alliance are sort of working together? But the Horde forces haven't really made it to the Blasted Lands yet.

So, pretty much everyone who could help me on either side are tied up with this mess.

While most of the soldiers and stuff defend, there's a group heading through the portal to scout out the situation.

I think Kelveris wants me to go with them, but I gotta help Brath. Maybe if I can figure out a way to save him, then I can go. Sort of a repayment for what they did for my world, you know?

I mean, I don't want to be one of those friends who only ever takes and never gives back. It's…really complicated.

But I have to help Brath first.

And I've been thinking that Neesera did something with a black dragon egg in some desert place a long time ago. And that she was happy when she found out about Wrathion.

I wonder if she has any answers.

I'm gonna find out, hopefully tonight or tomorrow. Like I said, she's gonna try to come see me, since she can just be summoned back to the front lines if she's really needed. I wonder if being summoned is as creepy for her as it is for me. I'll have to ask.

But anyway, with luck we'll be able to figure something out, because the truth is, Neesera is the only person I think I can trust with this.

Well, her and maybe Mr. Blackheart. I'd loathe having to get in touch with him, though.

For now, I'm going to let Kelveris continue his tour of the city, though. We've already visited the Dwarven District and the Cathedral Square. I think we're going to a place called Old Town tonight. He said Eric will be there, which will be nice. I haven't seen him in a long time.

Hopefully things will work out. I have my fingers crossed.


	10. Old Acquaintances

Just so you know, I did send Brath a message via my new crystal. I told him that I'm stuck in Stormwind looking for someone to send me back. He didn't reply right away, but when he did, all he asked was how Senta'ri was doing in Alliance territories, clearly not believing me.

So I told him my woeful tale of being summoned twice, leaving out the bits of how I'm still here because I want to find a way to save him. If those voices are in his head…I don't want them knowing my plans.

If they even would.

Is it paranoid that I don't want my boyfriend's voices to know what I'm up to?

I think it might be. A little, anyway.

That said, I'm also too paranoid to talk much to Neesera about my ideas. Why? Because when Kelveris brought me into Old Town, he pretty much headed straight for this old, rickety bar. And guess who was in said bar?

Nicolas Weaver.

For those who don't know—I sure wish I didn't—Nicolas is a legendary rogue who worked for Wrathion and was granted magickal daggers…which I inadvertently helped destroy. Kind of. Not really.

He blames me for it, though, because why not? If he didn't blame me for that, he might have to come up with a real reason to dislike me.

I've got plenty of reasons to dislike him.

In the course of our adventures, he poisoned me, told me all my friends and family were likely dead, and got me hurt on a number of occasions. He's always had a horrible attitude, and he's a total dick.

I admit, he's had a hard life. His best friend and the love of his life both died during the time that I knew him, but still. He was a jerk before all that, so it's not like the losses made him bitter.

Well, when he saw me, the first words out of his mouth were, "Where's your dragon?"

And of course, his dragon friend was there with him. He looked like a high elf, with glowing eyes and pointy ears and all that. Derrestrasz is his name, though I just call him Derres. He was much friendly than the rogue he carted around.

I just kind of grumbled something about Brath being busy, but he caught on almost instantly that something was amiss.

You know how I always say stuff like, 'a good rogue could do blah, blah' and all? Well, he's sort of my standard. As much as I despise him, Nicolas is really good at being a rogue.

It's miserable, and I'd never admit it to him, but that's the truth. So yeah.

He knows something's up. Worse, he's one of the ones who was originally hunting down the black dragons. Plus, I think he still considers Brath as evil, though I could be wrong. It's hard to tell with him, as he's really, _really_ good at lying.

So I definitely didn't want to talk to him about Brath.

Almost as soon as we'd entered the bar, Kelveris had gotten distracted by something and ditched me with the duo that I wasn't exactly happy to see. Of all my friends and acquaintances, I think these two were about as low on the list as you could get.

But we muddled through some painful small talk somehow. Mostly, it was Derres happily asking me questions while Nicolas watched me like he expected every word out of my mouth to be lies.

When I finally got a message from Neesera saying that she was in Stormwind, I just about sprinted out of that bar. However, I managed to tactfully excuse myself and head out. We met on one of the little bridges across the canals, but even as we hugged and exchanged pleasantries, she glanced past me and waved a little, tilting her head. "Nicolas. It's been a while. It is good to see you."

The jerk had followed me, of course.

I tried to tell him that Neesera and I had some catching up to do, but Neesera blew that one. She blinked and pointed out that we'd seen each other less than a month ago and then Nicolas had jumped in and pointed out that he hadn't seen either of us in years.

Without even meaning to do, I said that that was his fault, as he'd been the one to leave without a word and to never bother to contact anyone.

He dismissed me, saying that Kelveris and Eric had kept him in the know.

Somehow, he ended up invited along for dinner. We went to a nicer place than the bar I'd met him in, but it felt seedy, just having him there. I wasn't the only one who thought that, either. There were a lot of people who eyed our table with these condescending looks.

We all pretended we didn't notice—in Neesera's case, that could have been true. She's caring, but not always the best with details.

I should point out: in my world, rogues aren't necessarily thieves. There's sort of a distinction between the two. While either can be the other, neither are necessarily both, if that makes sense.

In Azeroth, it's pretty much an unspoken truth that all rogues are thieves.

I suppose that Nicolas and I looked our parts. We were both in fighting leathers and hadn't bothered to take off our weapons, sporting them on our hips—among others. Every rogue has at least one hidden blade, if not a dozen. We did take our gloves off to eat. It's never fun to get crumbs between the leather and your skin, and grease stains are just tacky.

Neesera was in her battle gear, too, but since it showed she was a shaman, people probably didn't care so much about her.

But yeah.

That evening was just one awkward situation after another.

Finally, though, Nicolas said he had to go. Part of me was sure that he was just going to follow us or something, to eavesdrop.

I really am getting paranoid.

Once we'd headed back to a room Neesera had rented—I felt bad about that. Like, I should have invited her to stay with me, so that she would have to pay for a room. But, well, Kelveris was paying for that room. Which meant that Nicolas would know where to find me. When we got there, I scoured every inch of the room, searching for places a person could hide or weak spots in the walls or floor where someone might be able to listen through.

When I was satisfied that the room was safe, I plopped down on the foot of the bed. Neesera was already seated there, having spent the last few minutes idly watching me. She never once asked why I was being so thorough. Maybe she picks up on more than she lets on…

Well, I finally broke the rather awkward silence by asking what she knew about old gods.

Instantly, her eyes narrowed. Not at me, per se. It was more the subject.

She explained to me how heroes had fought against C'thun, Yogg-saron, and sort of dealt with one called Y'shaarj. There were more out there, but those were the ones people had come across. She also explained how they had cults and influenced the minds of mortals, urging them to free them from their confines and what have you.

She paused, pointing out that the Black Dragonflight had been the most notoriously afflicted with their whispers, aside from some cult. It was the Old Gods who had driven the earth warder mad.

I'd sort of known that already—not the Brath ever talked about it. I'd always thought that, despite his callous demeanor, he'd still been sad that his dad had been killed. Now, I wonder if it was just the Old Gods covering their tracks. That seems like something dastardly that they would do.

Then, when the conversation was winding down, I asked the big question. "You freed Wrathion from the Old Gods' influence, right? How?"

Well. That was another long explanation, involving red dragons, a gnomish scientist, and some old Titan technology.

"Could it be done again?"

"If we gathered some more eggs, probably," Neesera shrugged. "But we don't need to, with that flight breeding in your world."

I gulped. "They can still reach them." I frowned. "The Old Gods. They can still reach Brath and the others."

Neesera's eyes widened. Then, even as she took it in, she gasped. "That is why you wanted to Nicolas to leave."

"Among other reasons," I muttered.

With a sigh, Neesera wound one of her curls around a long, thin finger. "This is not good. We are preparing to go to yet another world, when this world is still threatened." She ran let her hand fall to her lap. "The crises truly never end." She laughed faintly. "At least when we were fleeing the Legion, that was all there was. Now, though…" She sighed and shrugged. "Perhaps this is atonement for letting so many other worlds fall."

"Maybe the light was just leading you to where you'd be needed?" I offered. I wasn't huge on religion, but I knew Neesera was.

Smiling faintly, she shrugged again. "I do not know. We shall see, I suppose."

"But…is there a way we could free the dragons? A way we could free Brath?"

"To free them from the Old Gods' corruption…Wrathion is the only one I know who was ever successfully freed. And that was before he was born. The Old Gods' have had centuries to whisper to the others." She drummed her fingers against her knee, sitting cross-legged. "Most who are taken either go insane or are killed…I do not know of any cultists who came away from that experience intact."

My shoulders slumped, and I swear I could see my future slipping away from me. Sure, me and Brath would never have kids, but…I hadn't cared. So long as we could be together, that had been enough.

I wondered if I could plead with the Old Gods somehow. Maybe I could ask them to let him go. I could promise not to stand against them, if they'd just let him be free.

But then, what kind of person would that make me?

I doubted Brath would care if I made that sort of unscrupulous decision, but I don't think I could. My brother…I don't like to talk about him, but well, he used to play Dungeons and Dragons, right? Well, one time I had a crush on one of his friends, and I got my dad to make him include me in a campaign. I hated it so much. And Greg, my brother, found a way to kill my character off pretty early, but that's not the point. The reason I thought of that was because they had this chart for alignment. I think I would be…I don't know. Something on the good end of the spectrum. I just can't make those evil decisions and live with myself.

But then, if it came down to either Brath or my conscience, I had to wonder which I would actually pick. I mean, my morals have slipped a little since getting to know him. He always cheers me on a little if he catches me lying to someone or doing something to ruin someone else's day…

I wonder if that's just because of the corruption in his mind.

How much of the Brath I know is really him, and how much is just the Old Gods' influence?

Is there even really a distinction anymore?


	11. Always Something in the Way

Alright, well. Here is where things get a little…difficult.

Neesera and I split up to look for this gnome, right? Dr. Hieronymus Blam. It would seem that with a name like that, he'd be pretty easy to find. Yet somehow, he was nowhere.

Really, worse than that, once you found someone who knew him, he could be anywhere.

Searing Gorge, Ashenvale, Badlands, Sili-something. The list went on and on. Everyone said that they thought he was researching something new somewhere new.

He was a bit of a mad scientist, it seemed.

And kind of well known, in the right circles. Though, I suppose everyone is, when you put it that way, huh?

Anyway, Neesera finally caught me as I was wandering the docks, excited. She'd gotten word that the good doctor was between experiments and research ventures, and had headed home to Ironforge for a while.

It was great news.

There was a tram that could take us there, but Neesera decided it would be better to find a mage instead. After all, we didn't know how long the doctor would be in town. The tram took about a week, and we didn't want to miss him.

We were looking for a mage, and that meant heading over to the Mage district again. I gotta say, it is nice having everything labeled so neatly. It makes it easy to get around. I was also trying to avoid Kelveris and his guild—which was hard because I didn't know what they all looked like—and I'm pretty sure Neesera thought I might be spiraling down into insanity.

Well, those blessed arches leading into that purple roofed area were yawning up to devour us when I heard my name being called.

I tried to ignore it, but in no time, there was a familiar Chihuahua nipping dutifully at the toes of my boots. I stopped and stared down at Tinkerbelle, who wagged her little tale up at me.

Even as I started to turn around, resigning to my fate, a hand thudded on my shoulder.

Elizabeth.

Neesera shot me a look that implied she didn't think I needed to forgo all pleasantries just because we had a dragon to save and then nodded to our friendly hunter.

"Amy! Imagine running into you here!" Elizabeth cried out, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I'd been trying to get away from her.

"Hey," I replied, trying to summon up some enthusiasm of my own. I mean, I was happy to see her, but I had more important things to do, you know? "I thought you were in Australia or something for a while."

"Oh, yeah. I was," Elizabeth's enthusiasm vanished. "They didn't give a fuck what I had to say, so I figured I could do more by coming here." At that, she inspected our surroundings with obvious distaste. "Undercity is cooler, but apparently I can't _go_ there." She crossed her arms, pouting.

"Oh?"

"Doesn't matter that we're neutral," she muttered, walking with me as I began to edge my way forward. Neesera kept pace on her other side. "Humans are humans here, apparently."

"That's too bad. I know when I got ported to Orgrimmar, they threw me in a dungeon."

"You got to see Org?!" Elizabeth looked awed and then disappointed and then jealous and then hopeful. "Was it awesome? Do they have the spikes everywhere still? Did you see the Valley of Honor? What about Strength?"

"I was ported into a really dark place with a bunch of fel abusing warlocks," I replied, trying not to sound as annoyed as the memories made me. "And before I could get over the nausea of being summoned, I was having my arms wrenched behind me and shackled."

"Oh," Elizabeth said, clearly disappointed. "That sucks."

"No kidding."

"This is so dumb," Elizabeth continued, clearly not picking up on the vibes I was sending out that I was in a hurry. "It doesn't matter that we're neutral anymore. Here, humans are humans, regardless of world or magick resistance."

"It's too bad," I murmured, not really listening.

"It sucks!" Elizabeth cried. She stuck her tongue out at a passing guard, who merely rolled his eyes and kept on his patrol route. "I guess it's too hard for them to tell the difference between Alliance and neutral humans…lazy bastards. I wanted to meet the Banshee Queen…"

"Elizabeth," I finally interjected. "I don't mean to blow you off, but we're trying to get to Ironforge and—"

As if everything was conspiring against me, an explosion sounded off in the distance. We all instinctively ducked, as though it had been closer than it was. From the looks of the smoke, it had happened all the way in Old Town.

Before we'd even straightened up, shouts were coming from all around us.

Shop keepers ushered civilians inside and slammed their doors. Heroes rode through the streets and flew overhead, heading toward the curling smoke.

Another explosion went off from somewhere beyond the Cathedral Square—I couldn't remember the full layout of the city. Even as I watched some of the flying mounts swerve toward the new attack place, and some fly back toward the other districts, their riders peering down to try to see if anything was ready to attack again, another one went off in the Mage District.

Of course.

That sounds so terribly self-centered, but…

Bleh.

Neesera swore quietly under her breath as she readied her totems, and Tinkerbelle ducked closer to Elizabeth's shoes, growling. I drew my daggers and Elizabeth her bow.

It was hard to tell where to go. There was Chaos in the air, though most of the flyers had gone to the districts yet to be hit, hoping to stop whatever terrorist acts these were. They left the guards to fight their way through crowds of panicking citizens fleeing from the devastation.

I swung my daggers so that they rested against the leather of my gloves, not wanting to skewer any clumsy civilian running past me, as we made our way deeper into the district. At least for a little bit, I forgot about Brath and his returning insanity, instead focused on keeping pace with Neesera and Elizabeth and warning people to get back inside.

Another explosion sounded in the distance, but we were too far in the winding paths, with the purple thatched roofs blocking out most of the sky to see where had been hit. It had sounded like it was on the other side of town, though.

Neesera was telling people to stay indoors. After all, it didn't make sense for them to get trampled or hit by falling debris if another explosion went off nearby.

The wings from the mounts overhead were beating the smoke back down on us and making breathing in general horrible. On the plus side, it seemed to encourage people to get inside, and in no time we were the only ones wandering the streets, our eyes tearing up and all.

I could barely hear anything through the smoke—no calls, no cries, no flames crackling. It reminded me, in a way, of my home town, when it'd gone under military law. The streets had been so quiet and empty, as if people were just waiting for all the scary stuff to go away.

That alone made me want to end this. I wouldn't let the Legion take another world.

Assuming this was the Legion at all.

My mind raced through the stories I'd heard of other enemies. Surely the Horde wouldn't attack the Alliance now, after everything that happened with Mr. Hellscream….

Then I thought of the new orcs attacking. Supposedly there was a front there already to block them from getting this far north, though.

Even as I wondered what we might be up against, we reached the area where the central tower had been. In its place was a smoking mound of brick and stone. Bodies were scattered about and the whole area was still eerily silent. I could make out the soft whispers of flames now, but even they seemed muted, somehow. It was like we'd entered into some pocket where time and sound couldn't get in.

The three of us, along with a few guards who had managed their way through the smoke to the site, fanned out, picking our way carefully through the ruins. I felt like I'd throw up. Most of the victims here looked like they hadn't died from the explosion or even falling.

Most of the ones I was coming across…their necks had been…snapped was too delicate a word.

They'd been crushed.

Even as I steeled myself—the demons could be this brutal on occasion, so I'd learned to take in more gore than I used to be able to—I saw the flash of a spell reflecting through the smoke and then heard a deep, guttural rumbling.

I darted toward it, only to drop low to the ground as some of the smoke swirled out of the way to give me a fleeting, clear view.

There, just a few yards from me, was an orc. His skin wasn't like the ones I had seen before. Instead of green, he was brown…and bigger.

Even as he lumbered toward his next victim, the gangly mage saw me. The orc paused, beginning to turn his head in my direction just as the wind separated us with another curtain of smoke.

I took advantage of it, carefully moving to the side, not wanting to be in the same place when the creature got another good look.

Even as I tried to circle around, though, there was a sudden rattling of loose stone that seemed to come from all around me.

And then, the figure of that orc burst through the smoke, right in front of me.


	12. Direction

Well, I'm alive.

When that orc came after me, I tried to dodge, but he caught me by my leg, spun, and sent me flying into some rubble. In retrospect, I'm glad Nicolas wasn't there. He would have made an embarrassing event into a nightmare.

Luckily, that mage shouted the alarm and soon Neesera was there, healing us both. Elizabeth helped to get him out from under the debris that had landed on him. She is surprisingly strong for her frame.

I don't want to go into every sordid detail, but we killed the orc. It took a lot, too. Arrow in the back? Kept going. Dagger in the chest? Kept going. Frost bolt shattering his arm? He was ambidextrous, it turns out.

Like I said, that fight dragged on forever. But we got him. And of course after it was all over, then reinforcements arrived. Well, that's not their fault. Apparently there'd been half a dozen of those orcs at each site? They're calling him and the other orcs who attacked sappers.

As in rogues.

I've never seen a rogue do that before.

It makes me wonder about what those new orc warriors are like. Terrifying, no doubt.

But here's the thing: these orcs—well, the ones leading them anyway—are apparently replicas of the ones that attacked some thirty years ago.

So we finally know exactly what Mr. Hellscream did.

And that requires taking a look at the dragons.

Apparently each flight governs something different. I won't go into all of them, but the bronze dragons cover time. As in, all time. Everything that has been, that is, that will be.

And also, everything that could have been, could be, and could happen.

In other words, they govern multiple versions of reality.

As a result, they apparently get confused about which time and reality they're in, but that's a topic for another day.

The point is that there _are_ multiple realities.

I'll let that sink in for a moment.

There's difference versions of every world, which means there's different versions of people. There could be an Amy Ford out there who still has her family, who's in college at this point.

In a way, it's comforting. At the same time, I'm jealous of that Amy that may or may not even exist. But then, I guess that Amy could have been hit by a bus or something. Meh.

Back on topic.

Mr. Hellscream escaped into a different timeline. And now the orcs of that time are attacking our Azeroth, instead of their Azeroth. And who knows what that means for Alternate Earth.

But yeah.

So these orcs are invading our timeline, no doubt at Mr. Hellscream's persuasion.

It makes me wonder why someone can't just go back in time and prevent Mr. Hellscream from going to the other timeline, but I suppose I'm not capable of understanding all the intricacies of time travel.

Still seems like an easy fix now that we know the cause, but whatever.

Neesera has decided that she must go to the new Draenor. She apologized to me over and over, not wanting me to feel abandoned or anything. But in the end, she couldn't live with the guild if something terrible happened.

She headed back to the Dark Portal this morning, along with most of Kelveris' guild.

Elizabeth is leaving in the morning, too.

I want to, but…I have to save Brath.

Now I just have to find a mage to take me to Ironforge, and hope that I get there before the doctor leaves.


	13. Not Quite Right

Something really strange is going on.

Like, have you ever felt that you forgot something really, really important? Like, not just important, but totally crucial? Something that's an integral part of who you are?

I feel like I have.

I go to the tram to Ironforge every day and just watch it come and go. Every morning when I wake up, my first thought is that I have to get to the tram and pray that I'm not too late. But…by the time I get there, I don't know what I'm doing.

I've even gotten on it a couple times. The first time, the conductor seemed a little weirded out by me, since I guess I'd been going there for a week at that point, and he assumed that rather than staring at the tram itself, I was watching him. The first time I actually got on it, I was sure that as soon as I was on it, it would jostle some memory, some reason for me to be there. It didn't.

It just made me sick.

Dear God, you'd think that the gnomes would've fixed that swaying by now. I mean, there's nothing like going as fast as a car and knowing that the platform you're on is nowhere near as safe as one. One of the screws that keep it in place actually fell into my lap once.

Then the fact that I had to ride it back was…I threw up on a dwarf's boots in Ironforge just thinking about it. He was not very appreciative.

Travel hell aside, when the tram itself didn't jog any memories, I'd been sure that I would remember what I was there for. And I did, kind of? Not really.

I've tried to remember, I have.

It's just…

Clara says I'm acting on feelings from another life.

The first time I disappeared like that, I really freaked her and Eric out. They apparently tore Stormwind apart trying to find me, only to have some woman tell them that she'd seen me head to Ironforge.

The trip on the tram takes a few days to get from one city to another, but luckily Eric is a mage, and they just ported over. It wasn't hard to find me after that. All of the dwarves had pretty much gotten the memo that there was a bewildered human wandering their city. This one dwarf named Hen-something-or-other was really nice, actually. He'd even offered to go back with me to Stormwind, since his boyfriend lives out in Elwynn or something?

Just as we were boarding, Eric and Clara found me. Eric blinked onto the tram in time, but the gnome who takes tickets nearly kicked him off. He paid enough gold to get her to leave him alone, though, and asked me what was wrong with me.

When Hen-whatever told him that I'd been looking for a doctor, even I'd been confused. I'd told him that I'd needed to find a doctor before he left, but even as he told us that, I couldn't remember saying it.

Needless to say, Eric was worried.

Clara had made it onto the last platform of the tram—we were on the first—but she was not pleased that she'd had to spend her whole ride with a worgen who wouldn't shift out of his wolf form. She muttered something about the sniffing?

I dunno, Eric is a worgen, too, but I don't think I've ever seen him in wolf form. He seems really self-conscious about it. It's probably Clara's fault.

I mean, I don't wanna call her racist, but it feels a little racist that she'd pick on worgen for a worgen thing. Eric told me that wasn't the case, though. He said she has some weird condition, where certain noises really bother her, and the sniffing noise is one of them. Like, when Nicholas gets a cold, he's on his own.

Back in my world, I had a teacher like that. He was the nicest guy until someone smacked gum. Then he'd freak. And it wasn't just teachers being teachers and griping that someone dared to have gum. This was like a legit, really upset him thing. He told us about it, once. Some disorder with four S's in it. I don't remember the name.

Wow, I'm off topic.

When we all got back to Stormwind, and we parted ways with that dwarf, Clara'd asked what was wrong with me, and Eric told her that I had thought I needed to get to some doctor. Well, that raised a few flags for Clara. She dragged me to the cathedral, and I'm pretty sure that every last one of the priests and paladins there gave it a shot at healing me—even the ones that thought Clara was going way overboard.

Randall joked that I was going to grow extra arms from all the over healing.

It didn't do anything, though. I mean, I really wasn't hurt to begin with, so there wasn't anything to heal. But still…

It's kind of scary.

Something just seems…off. When this first started happening, Clara and Eric both kept going over everything with me, trying to see if maybe there were other holes in my memory or…whatever this is.

I remember that my name is Amy Ford. I'm from a dead world. I cried for weeks when the attempt to make a portal to my world failed, and I guess something could have happened to me during the few months where I had to deal with my loss—that time _is_ kind of blank. But I'm pretty sure that I was in the cathedral the whole time. I really don't see how I could have met a black dragon there. Though…that priest guy did turn out to be evil…what if he mind controlled me to forget stuff?

…Probably not.

Sometimes I think that Clara has tried mind controlling me to figure out what my deal is. I know that she mind visions Nicholas at bars to make sure he isn't checking out other women. He's gotten in trouble more than a few times for that. He complains that it's a violation of privacy, but that doesn't go over well with Clara when she hears about it.

Luckily magic doesn't really work on me. Well, aside from the really high level spells. So I guess a shadow priest with nothing better to do could probably mind control me, but Clara's holy, so I'm safe. I think. Though I don't think that other guy was holy….

Hmmm…

But! Back to my memories. I really don't think that I met any dragons during my depression. Mostly, that time was an inward journey. I spent days and days thinking about what I'd done, wondering how I could have done things differently to save my world.

I thought I could be some hero, like my brother—

It feels wrong to call him that, but I can't…Greg was always so…he _was_ my hero, so why do I feel like I'm betraying everything just thinking of him like that?

I get headaches when I think about this stuff too much.

Like if I think about dragons. I get this feeling that I knew one really, really well. Well, there's Derres, but it's not him.

Sometimes, if I push past the pain of the headache, I can remember this sly smile and bronze eyes framed with dark hair. I can almost hear a voice.

The only time I ever got close to actually piecing together a face in my mind, I passed out. At the tram, of course.

The only other detail I can pull out of…thin air, I guess…is black scales. This dragon I knew, he was a black dragon.

I think he was why I needed to see the doctor.

I never met any black dragons, though. Nicholas had dealings with some prince of them, but he never dragged me along. It was too dangerous or something. Just like when they went to kill the leader of the black dragons, Deathwing. Randall and Eric had stayed with me while the rest of their guild went out to save the day. They'd wanted to make sure I wouldn't do anything crazy, what with my whole world gone. Randall thinks that because black dragons were so terrible and rampant when I first arrived, that I've associated them with the loss of my world, which is why I think of a dragon that I've lost all the time. It's like a surrogate that I can focus on that's less overwhelming?

I'm pretty sure he'd be a psychologist if he'd been in my world.

Derres is oddly quiet about this. I asked him about it once, when he was drinking with the others. There are time dragons, you see. I've asked him so many times if perhaps one could rewind things and let me save my world, but…

Nicholas says that the dragons can't just do something so drastic on a whim. They protect from that, apparently.

Really, I just think he doesn't like me much. Well, I know he didn't, but…Eric says he's warmed up to me, but I'm skeptical.

But, I shouldn't be so hard on him. After all, he's the reason that I even have a home here in Azeroth. I ended up in Booty Bay when I got here, and the demons followed me. After their attack, I elicited the help of some of the heroes that had fended them off and, well, they were dicks. I don't mean to be rude, but seriously. But then the barkeep told the goblin who'd saved me originally, Fizz, that they were being jerks. It's weird, because he was super busy after all that fighting. I remember that that was why I'd gone over to them instead of trying to have him introduce me to someone to save my world. I mentioned this to Fizz in one of the letters I wrote him—we're pen pals—and he says that some woman apparently pointed out what was happening to the barkeep. Whoever she was, I guess I really owe her.

Anyway, the barkeep told Fizz, and he chewed them out. Fizz told them about how I fell from the sky and all, and it was Nicholas who came out and asked me more about my world. He, Clara, Randall, and a few of their buddies brought me to Stormwind where I met Eric and the rest of their guild. They did everything they could to try to find a way back to my world—they even enlisted the help of a few draenei mages—but…there was nothing that we could do.

I like to think that maybe my world made it. I mean, we humans are resilient, right?

I like to think that we did, but I can't help but feel that they needed magic on their side to really fight the Legion. Magic and dragons.

Maybe Greg led them to victory.

…

Why does my skin crawl when I think things like that?

But anyway.

I've forgotten something important. I know that I have. But…there's nothing I can think to do to remind myself of what it was.

The tram's just left. Perhaps this is the last time I'll come down here. There's gotta be more important stuff I could be doing. Eric and the others are talking about going after this angry orc who messed with the time lines—he gets to do it, but I can't?

Maybe I'll help them with that. Nicholas has been training me to be a rogue, and I'm decent with daggers. Maybe if I actually let myself break this routine, something will come to me.

It's worth a shot.


	14. My Watcher

Do you ever feel like you're being watched? Like, if you turn around at just the right moment, you'll see someone a few yards back, just before they can duck behind something?

I have had that feeling sooooo much lately. Like, seriously.

Every time I leave the cathedral—I sort of live there, but not really?—l can feel someone watching me. I've been training with Nicholas to be a better rogue, so that means I have to leave every day. And then I just…I feel it, all day.

I tried to bring it up to Nicholas once, and he sort of dismissed it, saying new rogues were always paranoid once they learned how sneaky they could be, with enough practice. I guess it's sort of like how psych students notoriously self diagnose after that first psych class, before they learn that it's fine, they're fine, they don't have the billion issues they just learned about.

So since I've learned how easily high level rogues sneak around, I expect to be followed everywhere or something?

I don't know how much faith I have in that.

It would be one thing if it just happened every now and then, but this…this is brutal. I can barely sleep because I _know_ that the second I leave the cathedral, someone will be keeping track of every little thing that I do.

Nicholas' guild—most of them, anyway—headed through this portal thing to the alternate orc time line? And then the portal was destroyed? And while they've been trying to figure out portals to get to them, the mages are not doing so well.

Basically, everyone's writing off anyone who went to Draenor at this point because we've heard nothing. They're still gonna wait another month before funerals start, though, because I guess this really important mage and orc went through the portal, and no one wants to think they could be gone forever.

Though, I gotta say, things have been pretty peaceful since the portal closed. With Garrosh whatever-his-name-was gone, there seems to be real hope for a lasting peace between the Horde and Alliance. I mean, there's still concerns and stuff, but…yeah.

Things are going pretty well in Azeroth.

I still feel like I've forgotten something, and I still have really bad bouts of depression when I think about my dead world, but if I could just figure out who's watching me, I'd be doing pretty good, too.

I mean, I can't spend my whole life focusing on the past.

That's why I decided to do it.

To go against that instinctual fear in the back of my head that tells me to run when I feel those phantom eyes on me. I'm going to get to the bottom of this.

That's why I've been walking around all day. I can feel whoever it is. There's that nauseating prickle along the back of my neck. And it's been getting worse. I've noticed it tends to be the worst near the decimated park—there's this huge petition to get the park renovated, by the way. It was damaged a few years ago now, and it's this awful reminder to everyone about how terrible dragons can be, but King Wrynn isn't the best with balancing finances. His son's shown some promise, but I guess he's still sort of at that age where his dad doesn't take him seriously, so when he suggests they allocate some funds toward restoration, his dad just pats his head and buys another siege vehicle?

Yeah…

The whole peace thing would be a lot further along if the prince was the king.

…

I'd better not let anyone hear me say that. They sort of behead people here for open dissent. Yay monarchy?

But back on topic.

The park is in all kinds of shambles, and it seems like whatever's watching me sort of focuses on that area.

So. That's where I stood. In front of an old, burnt out building, wondering if I should just walk in or around or…just go home? See, I'm pretty sure this building is about to fall. Like, seriously. They should do something about this place. Beyond this row of buildings, the ground is literally caving into the ocean.

The elves always get really bitter about it, too, if you mention it in front of them.

Maybe we could start a volunteer project, where people bring dirt and stuff to fill the hole.

Granted, it is a _really_ big hole.

I digress.

So, it's obvious that just standing here wasn't going to do anything for me. And if I didn't get a move on, the guards were going to come by and ask me questions and mark me as a delinquent for staring at decrepit buildings or whatever. Great stuff.

It was just… Normally that feeling came from somewhere behind me, from yards down the road or a shop's stoop or behind some crates.

But the key was, it was always _behind_ me.

But as I stood there, it felt like I was staring back. Like I should have been able to see whoever was watching me, but just didn't know where to look. Like they could have been standing right in front of me, and I just couldn't see it.

Rogue-y stuff.

Great, right?

But I'd come this far, so I figured chickening out now was just dumb. I mean, I ran through a portal to another world. How hard is it to step inside an old building?

Even as I gathered myself and stepped forward, a pebble hit the cobblestone in front of me.

As I looked around, another one thudded at my feet. From the left. Around the corner of the building.

I just kind of kept standing there a minute, because if I followed the pebbles, I just knew I was gonna end up heading down into the crumbling part of the park and that it wasn't going to end well. Nothing ever ends well for me.

Another one hit the toe of my boot.

I really didn't want to.

But on the other hand, if someone was throwing pebbles at me, _that_ meant there really was someone there. _That_ meant I was right.

And Nicholas was _wrong_.

That still makes me happier than it should.

Well, anyway, I went after the pebble-thrower. As I went around the corner, I saw a foot disappear behind the back of the building. So I followed.

Each step felt like it was looping my insides into knots. Over and over and over. But I kept going because I wanted my answers and no one else was going to give them to me. When I reached the corner, no one was behind the building.

That made me stop. I had to wonder if this was some sort of rogue test. Was I supposed to have come around the corner more sneakily? But why throw pebbles and make it obvious they—whoever they were—wanted my attention?

It abruptly occurred to me that this was exactly the sort of crap that Nicholas would pull. A rogue hazing, if you will. A few of the senior rogues around Stormwind had been teasing me about needing to be initiated into something.

It would frikkin' figure.

Of course they would do this to me. How many of them would be cracking jokes at my expense, asking why it'd taken me so long to follow the watchful gazes?

I decided that I wasn't going to play ball. Screw it. They'd made me feel horrible for weeks.

However, even as I started trying to plan a way to get back at them, plan a way to make those conniving jerks feel guilty, I turned around and froze.

Because see, they weren't the ones who'd been watching me.

Turning had brought me almost nose to rotting nose with a walking corpse. A Forsaken with hollowed eyes stared back at me, unblinking, unbreathing.

Then, slowly, she cracked a crooked grin that stretched her lips a bit too widely and straightened out of her hunch. "It's about time, Miss Ford." She reached out and gripped my arm, her cold, dead flesh pinching into mine. "We gotta fix this mess before it gets any worse."


	15. A Glimpse of Hope

Just a quick recap: I decided that it was a brilliant idea to use myself as bait to lure out whoever—or whatever—had been following me these last few weeks. I mean, right there at the end, I was so sure it was going to be Nicholas or one of his annoying rogue-y friends—they're actually not that bad, I was just really mad because I thought they were freaking me out just for giggles—that I thought I was ready for anything.

Of course, I wasn't.

I'm sure you can imagine my reaction when I turned around and faced a rotting corpse instead. That's not really something you expect, right? I mean, in my world, it just didn't happen, period, no matter how much some people wanted a zombie apocalypse. And here, you don't encounter undead unless you go, like, way north. And I guess there's the occasional one in Horde or neutral territory.

But not here. Not in Stormwind.

And her eyes being hollow really didn't help because that's just…

Okay, so my best friend Bethany sort of decided she was going to be a nurse after her dad lost his eye in a really freak yardwork accident. And so she would always come to me with these little details about anatomy and stuff, even though a lot of it was kind of…I don't wanna call it gross, but maybe unsettling?

So, her dad didn't really feel like getting a prosthetic, and he wore an old school eyepatch. He never flipped it up around me, but apparently he did that once at a party she had before she met me, and one of her other friend's parents said they could never come over to her place ever again or something because that freaked them out so badly.

I'm so rambling right now. The point, however, is that Bethany told me that when you lose an eye and there's nothing in the socket, the muscles that are normally around the eye sort of relax and fill the empty space. So if the eyelids aren't completely closed, you see pink.

Not empty, dark space.

I guess the muscles don't really relax when you're dead. Or maybe those were just gone….

But yeah. Staring into empty voids is really….

I screamed, okay?

Well, I mean, I tried to, but…rogues, right? Really good at interrupting things.

Of course, after she sapped me and I woke up having been dragged a bit further away from the roads and to a part of the collapsing ground that occasionally shook under us—I still don't know how she got us out there without the ground just giving up beneath us—I was able to stomach and comprehend a bit better.

I don't know what you know about sentient corpses, but this one has been very polite. I'm pretty sure she's got a bit of crazy hidden under all those smiles, but considering how things have played out, I really can't judge.

Her name's Aubrey, though she goes by Bree. I feel kind of terrible saying that she looks like she was really pretty when she was alive, because I don't want to call her ugly now, but the whole rotting thing is…kind of working against her.

Oh my god, I'm so shallow and horrible.

But…that aside, she told me to call her Bree after I told her not to call me Miss Ford anymore, which she was doing a lot as she talked about how we needed to leave. There were things to do, people to save.

I was trying to ask her how she knew me—because she clearly did—when my other tail showed up.

This time it _was_ Nicholas. And friends.

See, turns out he actually did take me seriously when I told him about how I was being followed, but he knew that if I knew he was treating the whole issue as though it mattered, I'd freak out and tip off whoever was following me.

So he basically waited for me to say, 'Screw it,' and lure out my stalker.

And he and his friends stalked me in the meantime to try to catch my stalker themselves. Stalkers stalking stalkers.

Rogues.

Just…

I'm one of them.

I still have trouble including myself with that.

Anyway, the reason Bree had dragged me off to where she did was because she knew Nicholas knew, and she wanted to buy herself just enough time to intrigue me.

See, as soon as the good old Alliance spies were descending on us, she leaned in real close and said, "Your world didn't die. Something caused a hiccup in your timeline. Ask them about the Bronze Flight."

And then they had her.

Now, I know about the Bronze Flight. How many times have I asked Derres if we could go to them and have my world fixed? It was at least a dozen before I noticed how tense he'd started getting the second he saw I was heading his way, expecting to have to run through that same debate as always.

But…what she said.

What if this isn't what's supposed to happen? What if my world _was_ supposed to be saved?

Even according to Derres, the dragons would help me if that's the case.

I mean, I'm not some important, critical figure to the Alliance. I have met the king, once. Sort of. See, Randall and Kelveris are sort of important, and they brought me to meet him shortly after I showed up. He wanted to know all about my world and technology and stuff, but seeing as I'd just _lost_ my world, I wasn't really that talkative. He got kind of annoyed, but his son stepped in and saved me.

Prince Anduin is pretty nice. Like, it's not like I have lunch with him every week or anything, but he just had a really sort of gentle spirit vibe.

But the reason I bring him up is because he said that if I ever needed a favor, I could talk to him. At the time I wasn't really very appreciative. After all, everyone and –thing I ever loved had died horribly, and here was some kid younger than me offering to…I didn't even know. Pay off any parking tickets I got?

I mean, I wasn't a complete jerk, but I wasn't super nice either. I don't think I even thanked him.

I was in a really bad place.

He gave me a ring, though, and said to come by the castle if I ever needed anything.

Well, after Nicholas and friends 'secured' the trespasser, I asked—as nonchalant as I could, which is to say not very—if I could have a word with her before they tossed her in a cell to rot—more—or whatever.

That didn't really go over very well.

Nicholas wanted to know what she said to me to make me think she could be trusted, and when I told him, he was beside himself with how stupid I was being. I mean, my world is gone, blah, blah, blah. I get it.

I asked him that if something happened to Clara, wouldn't he do anything in his power to fix it, even if it meant talking to an enemy.

I just wanted to know what she was talking about.

And again, it's not like I have influence or anything that would make me worth cozying up to. I'm a nobody, not even a blip.

But he wouldn't hear it. He said some pretty harsh things about denial and accepting that death happens and how Clara would make me hot chocolate if I dropped the subject.

That he thought he could bribe me to drop a possible lead of saving my world with hot chocolate is…

Every semi-warm feeling I had toward him is gone. I hope he trips and drowns in the canals. And not the nice, well-kept ones. The gross ones.

So when he rejected me, I headed back to where I'm staying, like a good little girl because at that moment I just didn't know what else to do. Then I saw the ring where I keep it next to my stuff. That's when I got an idea.

I can't fake cry to save my life, but thinking about all the emotions I've been trying so hard to suppress got me going—a bit too easily for my liking, to be honest.

Anyway, I balled to a few paladins about how Nicholas was mean—I left out all the important details—and they were super quick to bash on rogues. I just kind of sniffled along and ignored the fact that technically I'm a rogue, too, and their sweeping statements were really unflattering. I told them I was going to stay in my room and to please not let any of those mean, terrible rogues bother me.

They hopped on that bandwagon faster than you can say, 'Praise the Light!'

So I sniffled and got my crying under control for a little while and then took the ring and checked the door. They, sweet, Light-loving souls that they are, had not congregated around my door to listen to my heartbroken tears, but were rather dutifully on guard near the end of the hall.

I've always been really good at sneaking up on people, or past them. I used to scare the crap out of Greg while he was playing his games, and he would get soooooo mad. That's actually why I ended up going the rogue route. I slipped past Nicholas and Clara one day to go wander the city, and Clara said I had promise.

Back on topic. I went down a few side halls, borrowed a priest cloak, and slipped out a side door without any of them being the wiser. Part of me wanted to stay to see them yell at Nicholas, but at the same time, if he told them why I was crying, I had a feeling I would lose sympathy really fast.

But you know what? I don't doubt that they _will_ find out I lied to them. And, honestly, I don't care. I can deal with a few paladins not liking me, if it means that my world can be brought back.


	16. Going Rogue

So it officially doesn't matter anymore if I criticize the king of Stormwind, because I'm pretty sure I've been labeled a traitor to the Alliance. Funny story, really.

Or not.

I suppose that, once again, I need to backtrack a little.

See, getting to the castle wasn't hard at all. And wouldn't you know, as soon as I was walking up the steps, Nicholas was walking down them to greet me. I suppose it wasn't hard for him to figure out that I'd try this. It pretty much was the most _me_ thing that I would do.

So. Rather than let him reach me, berate me, and talk me out of doing whatever it was that I was doing, I turned to the nearest guard, showed them the ring, and said, "The prince is expecting my report."

A very not me thing that threw Nicholas off.

There was an odd feeling of satisfaction that curled in my gut as I was marched past him, post haste. It's still there, really, whenever I think about it. He tried to follow, but I told the guard he wasn't part of the mission.

After all, he wasn't.

He tried to follow us anyway, but I heard a few guards arguing with him.

Part of this just didn't sit right with me, though.

Thing was, he got desperate _really_ fast. Like, demanding they let him past because 'they didn't know what consequences would happen' sort of desperate. I've never seen him lose his cool like that before. Ever.

It was weird.

But, whatever.

I had more important stuff to take care of. Still do.

I met with Prince Anduin in one of the sitting rooms, and I have to say they leave people alone with their prince pretty damn easy. It seems like he would get assassinated really fast. Maybe everyone's too afraid of his dad or something.

I have to say, he's pretty cool, though. Which is why I feel kind of bad, because, well…more on that later.

Once we were alone, he simply sat down, motioned to a chair near him, and asked what I needed. No, 'Why pretend to have information for me?' or 'Did you think deceit was the best thing to do here?'

Just how could he help?

People are so much nicer here than in my world. I feel like I wouldn't be getting this kind of help if I was back home.

Once I was talking to him, it was just…. He asked how I was doing, how I liked Azeroth. Nice, pleasant stuff. I mean, I almost expected him to start talking about the weather.

I answered accordingly.

Then he breeched the subject of my world. Before that, I have to admit I was floundering. How do you tell a prince you need to see his prisoner? If she even counted as _his_ prisoner… Like, it's really to the point, and I figured I should be nice first. And I mean, even though he said I could ask for anything, he didn't say he'd actually grant whatever it was. Just that I could ask, you know?

But talking about my world… it was the perfect Segway.

"That's actually sort of why I'm here," I began. His face was so concerned. And I was totally ready to drag him on board Team Crazy, when I remembered the way Nicholas had been.

Hope, as much as I liked it, wasn't really on the same level as logic at the moment.

So I lied.

"I think someone else made it here from my world," I said, rushing through my words and praying the lie wasn't too obvious. "There's an undead rogue the SI:7 just captured, and I think she has information on them. But they think I'm too…"

"Emotionally compromised to use good judgment?" Prince Anduin finished for me.

I winced at how on the mark his description was, but nodded. "Yeah."

Prince Anduin seemed to consider the request for the longest time, his frown a bit too deep for my liking. He was gonna tell me no, I just knew it. I had to think of something and fast. I motioned toward the door. "My mentor, Nicolas Weaver, is waiting in the foyer… or whatever, to drag me back and keep me under lock and key. He didn't really listen when I explained stuff to him—he so never does—and seems to think me finding a fellow survivor equates to trying to find a way to save my world… again."

Almost instantly, his stance changed. With a sigh, he nodded toward me. "My father's the same way."

 _I know_ , I thought. _That's why I phrased it that way._

Instead of confessing that, I simply nodded. "I, um, didn't want to start anything, but I've noticed."

For the first time, his smile was almost contemptuous. "Most notice, few comment." He drummed his fingers against his armrest for a moment and then abruptly stood up. "I'll have quarters made up for you here in the castle, so that you don't have to deal with your mentor." Even as I opened my mouth to protest, he held up a hand. "I have a friend who can make the SI:7 jump at a word, but it'll take a day or two for him to get here. Portals and all." Prince Anduin sighed so dramatically at that, and all I could think of was how inconvenienced Azeroth would be with planes and stuff.

Like, you'd think it would be an improvement from horses, but with portals and dragons, they're about as advanced as my world was. At least as far as travel times go.

"What if they kill her before then?" I whispered.

He just smiled and patted my hand, after striding over to me. "They won't."

"How can you be so sure?"

He quirked a brow. "I _am_ a prince…" he paused before adding, "and so is he."

And so it was with that confidence that I was ushered off to the guest wing in the castle to await whatever plot he was hatching. Two days felt like an eternity to have to wait, but I was determined not to mess this up.

It turns out I wasn't even holed up in the castle for a night.

I'm pretty sure I hadn't even been asleep for twenty minutes—it took me hours to get tired enough to pass out to begin with—when someone shook me awake rather roughly. As I blinked past the grogginess drooping my eyelids, I was greeted with a pair of glowing red eyes staring at me.

Needless to say, I screamed.

Well, I tried to. Before I could, a hand covered my mouth. A hand with what I could swear had clawed fingers. Even as I tried not to freak out—you'd think I'd be used to this stuff by now, by the way.

But I'm not.

So, when I finally managed to calm down, I could hear Prince Anduin saying it was okay. He was standing next to the window. The guy who had woken me up had a swarthy complexion and a turban. Oh, and the glowing eyes and claws.

And he looked to be about Prince Anduin's age.

Great.

The fate of my world rested in the hands of two adolescent boys. Who weren't even from or invested in it.

I tried not to look bitter as I crawled out of bed. I'd worn my clothes to sleep, anyway, just on the chance things might be moving faster than anticipated. When I was up, and they were confident I could pay attention, Prince Anduin motioned us over to the window. We were on the third floor, so it was with great trepidation that I listened.

"This is Wrathion," Prince Anduin explained, even as the young stranger sat on the sill, turned, and dropped from sight.

My stomach dropped with him. But then, abruptly, something in my head told me he could fly. It was the most absurd thing, but there it was. As I leaned out, I saw a poof of smoke and then he was staring up at us again, with those eerie, eerie eyes.

"I'll levitate you before you hit the ground," Prince Anduin motioned for me to jump.

I frowned. "Magic doesn't work well on me, generally speaking."

"It's fine. I can adjust the spell."

"I'd really rather just take the stairs."

"Mr. Weaver is guarding the stairs, per Wrathion's instructions."

"What?"

Prince Anduin motioned out the window. "Mr. Weaver is one of the best rogues in Azeroth. And the best way to make sure the best don't find us, is to assign them elsewhere. It's common sense."

"And you couldn't have him guard the window?"

I heard another poof and jumped when I realized I was no longer alone on the windowsill. Prince Wrathion inspected each of us, brow furrowed. "Is there a problem?"

"Miss Ford is just a bit apprehensive about magic."

"It doesn't work well on me," I protested.

Prince Wrathion leaned toward me, sniffing. I had the oddest sense of déjà vu. "You're a black dragon, aren't you?"

He cocked his head, a bit too sharply. I mean, I know Derres, but not really well. But I have seen him do things like this, motions a bit too…fluid, predatory to be human. If that makes sense.

Prince Wrathion's eyes were on me, inspecting me. "Yes."

"You remind me of someone."

His eyes narrowed. "Who?" Then, abruptly, he tried to smile. It looked like more of a snarl. "If you don't mind my asking?"

"My head hurts if I think about it too hard," I replied, shifting a little uncomfortably under his glowing gaze. "But it's from a dream, I guess?"

That made him lose interest. Or at least he seemed to.

"I suppose I can fly you down," he mused, letting the subject slide. When Prince Anduin snorted, he glared. "I can."

I glanced from one to the other. "If he's a dragon…"

"Oh, by all means," Prince Anduin replied, crossing his arms. "Ferry her down, great dragon."

To that, Prince Wrathion paused. Then he eyed me. "Have you dealt with many dragons?"

"I know Derres," I replied, thinking it over. The way these two acted was kind of adorable. If I hadn't been so concerned with finding my way to that forsaken rogue, I might have enjoyed watching them argue and tease each other. "He's a red dragon who helps my mentor a lot…"

"I see…"

He seemed hesitant all of a sudden, which was odd because he had so readily offered his assistance. However then there was a proof of smoke and rather abruptly I was again sitting alone on the windowsill. In his place was... well he wasn't exactly what I had expected.

I mean there was the whole scaly lizard thing going for sure but he wasn't anything like what I had seen before. There were no grand wings or long swishing tail or well the whole majesty that went with dragons.

Instead he looked more akin to an overfed pet. His legs were little stumps as were his wings and he had a pot belly. I mean there were claws and fangs too for sure—and let's not forget the glowing eyes—but they were not particularly intimidating at all.

Like seriously.

I mean it makes sense that there would be baby dragons, but somehow I just sort of assumed they would come out of the egg looking really bad ass.

I think my expression said as much too.

I don't know if you've ever seen an indignant baby dragon but they don't really pull out the whole intimidating reptile thing. They're more like, well...

He is adorable.

And still so totally a teenage boy. So obviously he did not appreciate that sentiment.

So while I was trying to rain in the awwwwww, he sort of flew in little circles. Like that would somehow fix things. Importance of my mission aside, I really wanted to take about 10 minutes and just hug the baby dragon.

However, I managed to rain in my fascination with the giant lizards of Azeroth and instead asked how the tiny creature who is not as big as my torso expected to fly me down.

He growled at me. Like an actual growl.

I dunno if dragons just can't talk in their dragon form or if he was just really angry. Something told me that he could talk if he wanted to.

He hovered a bit closer and after staring at him blankly for a minute or two I finally held my arms out.

His little claws gripped my shoulders with surprising force, and before I could realize this was a really stupid idea, we were dropping through the air.

I could hear his little wings beating furiously.

What didn't really help when I looked to see the ground rushing up to meet us.

This was very reminiscent of when I fell out of the sky.

However, before I could pass out or just hit the ground a bit too hard, we were floating. Even as my feet lightly touched the ground Prince Anduin landed beside us, smug look of superiority on his face.

Never mind that he looked like he'd exhausted nearly his entire mana pool. Magic had saved the day instead of the little dragon.

I tried to ignore that. After all, as soon as we were on the ground it was time to find our way to the prisoner.

Prince Anduin led the way through the courtyard that my room had overlooked and into old, quiet halls. The castle was eerie at night and with every scuff of our boots—for once it wasn't mine but the dear princes'—I expected to turn and see Nicolas upon us. However, if there was a rogue following us, they were far too good for me to detect.

We left the castle and made our way quickly through quiet streets, the silence interrupted only by the occasional noise drifting out from a long closed shop or the faint ruckus from a distant tavern.

Finally, we came to the building that Nicholas had brought me to on more than one occasion for my rogue training. There was no way that we were going to get inside without someone noticing us. This was when, rather abruptly, Prince Wrathion turned to us and rather magically conjured cloaks.

Prince Anduin and I made sure that our faces were covered by the shadows of the hoods before we approached the building.

When Prince Wrathion reached the doorway, it swung open before he could even lift a hand to knock, and a man that I vaguely recognized blocked our path. However even as I panicked and had to fight the urge to pull my hood lower, Prince Wrathion simply greeted the man and told him that we had business inside.

Despite a curious glance, the man simply let us in. He tried to ask Prince Wrathion about what had brought us there but the young dragon brushed him off.

I have to say despite his rather adorable appearance in his dragon form, he seems very formidable mentally. It sort of made me wonder just how much the adult dragons dumb themselves down to talk to us, mortals.

A few other people were present as we walked through the halls with purpose, but none of them dared try to stop us. I had to wonder how many times Prince Wrathion had made this path, because his feet knew it well.

We went far deeper into the building than I had ever been on my own or with Nicholas. It felt like the twists and turns would never end. Just as my impatience begin to win me over, almost prompting me to ask how much longer this would take, we were there.

There was no real warning that there would be a dungeon up ahead. Suddenly, there were simply cells.

The one we sought was at the end of the corridor, and it was guarded. Of course. Can't ever have things be easy can we?

Again though, Prince Wrathion simply walked up to the guards and told them that we had business with the prisoner. This time they seemed rather skeptical, and one of them was more than willing to voice this. They wanted to know what the Prince of the Black Dragons wanted with a simple horde spy.

Wrathion stepped in too close for us to hear what he said, but—whatever it was—was enough that the guards bolted from our path, apologies falling from their lips.

We entered the room single file, with Prince Anduin at the tail, and I felt my heart skip a beat as I saw Bree chained to the wall.

She simply grinned as she watched us walk in. "Doesn't matter the timeline, does it? Miss Ford ends up with the black dragons no matter what."

"What?" Prince Wrathion asked, most alarmed. He glared at me as though I had just tricked him. Which I had, just not about what he thought I had.

"You think there's a different timeline where my world was saved?" I asked, forgetting both princes.

"I met you in it. In Wales. I was helping clean up a nuclear meltdown. Your people fought like the demons they pushed back. But they needed Azeroth's help. Without us, your world falls."

Perhaps I should have been suspicious. Perhaps I should have asked for more proof. But she knew we had a country I know I'd never mentioned, and she knew about nukes.

And more than that, I just...knew it was true. I dunno how.

Even as Prince Wrathion tried to ask for clarification, Bree slipped free from her shackles—who knew how long she'd had them picked—and knocked Prince Wrathion out. Even as Prince Anduin tried to protest, I mirrored her actions, sending him to the floor. I caught him before he could hit his head or anything.

Before I could ask how we could get her out, she was popping on a strange earring that made her look human. It actually made her look a bit like Prince Anduin. She took his cloak and flipped it around her shoulders, pulling his hood down.

"We have to get to the Caverns of Time, but first, we just need to get out of here. Booty Bay is our best bet. Or Stonnard. We can find a mage to port us to Dalaran, and then we can get to the caverns from there."

"I know a mage in Booty Bay who might be able to help us out," I offered, thinking of Fizz. I wondered how much he would charge for a portal, or if he would say that it was impossible, because of my magic resistance.

"Good to know," Bree offered, her voice an echo of the prince's as she nodded to me and headed to the door.

Without a look back, I followed her lead.


	17. Recovering the Past

I won't bore you with explicit details surrounding the escape from Elwynn Forest. It mostly involved sleeping in shrubs and trekking through mud and dirt—not like we could very well just stroll down the road, after all.

All the while, Bree kept telling me how much buffer I was in our 'real' reality.

We could have gone faster if I had gotten into my training faster, instead of spending _so_ many months despondent and depressed over the loss of my world, but… such is life. I guess. I mean, I couldn't have actually known it wasn't true, right? Or could I have, if I'd just tried a little harder to chase my dreams and not listened to everyone who told me I had to let go?

Bleh.

Anyway.

All in all, I didn't mind Bree's complaining, because more often than that, she talked about how much better things had been, and a few gripes about my inadequacies in this timeline seemed a small price to pay for that. There was so much that she told me that filled my heart with hope. My world had magic, my world had brought the Alliance and Horde together—at least for a little while.

I had a dragon boyfriend. Who had disappeared shortly before everything was rewritten.

It was all so fantastical.

Part of me was sure she was making it up. But part of me also _remembered_. It was eerie, but flashes of another life would bubble up. I could remember trees merged with skyscrapers, a young boy from Belgium, the wind in my hair as I flew on a dragon's back.

I remembered the name Brath.

At first, the headaches that came every time a memory sparked up were unbearable. They came unbidden and abrupt, as Bree would tell me of Egypt or Brazil, and suddenly my mind would be loath to remember so much as my own name through the spiking, white hot pains that shot through me.

Bree said it was because strong magic had been used on me. The more I picked at it, though, the weaker it would get, and the less it would hurt.

Excruciating pains aside, it just didn't make sense to me.

I mean, she said my timeline was interrupted, rewritten somehow. So how could I remember things that had been prevented from happening? That had been canceled out with new choices?

Bree had tried to explain it to me, but I could tell that she just barely understood it herself. She said that when we got to the Caverns of Time, the dragons would be able to explain it better.

For now, I just had to take her stories on faith.

And I could totally do that.

It took us two weeks to make it to a river that separated Elwynn Forest from an area Bree called Duskwood. It certainly looked the part, as though it had captured pieces of the night and clung to it, even in what should have been broad daylight. I thought maybe it was cursed, but it could have just been that the trees were denser across the water.

I dunno.

Getting to the water was easy. Crossing it, though, was not. When we got close, we saw an adventurer flying overhead, on a gryphon, coming low to almost skim the water as the rider peered through the trees, searching.

For us.

Bree cursed under her breath, hunching lower to the ground in a way that made her look really, really unnatural. I mean, sometimes, I could forget she was undead if she was facing away from me, but then she'd do something like this, a movement far too fluid for living limbs. It was jarring, though I tried not to stare.

"This would be so much easier if you were undead."

I have to say, I didn't like how easily she'd said that. Like all she'd have to do is scratch me or something and bam! I'd be a zombie, too.

She seemed to pick up on my discomfort, because she patted my shoulder and grinned. "I said it'd be easier, not necessary. We just need to get a feel for patrols and the like. Everything will work out." As she let go of my shoulder, she added under her breath—I'm pretty sure she switched languages and didn't realize I'd be able to understand her for this part, "Worst case, they kill you, and I raise you. This _isn't_ going to be our reality."

So there was that.

I needed to sleep, but Bree didn't, and so as I turned in for an hour or so, she headed out to scout the area. She did that every time I slept, making sure that we didn't walk into any scouts or adventurers.

I think she let me sleep longer than usual because when I woke up I wasn't nearly as stiff as I was used to being. We've been sleeping on the cold hard ground or rather I had been sleeping on it for the past two weeks and yet here down by the river I slept better than I had since possibly arriving in Azeroth. I can't explain it but it's like a part of me is finally back. A part of me I thought I had lost forever.

It was refreshing, and I felt like I could do anything. Climb a mountain, outrun a wolf, anything really.

That is until Bree explained what we were going to have to do.

See no matter where we planned to go we still had to head south and that meant we had to get across this river one way or another.

Our options weren't very good either. There were one or two bridges that headed south but they were all guarded from what Bree could tell. I was a bit surprised that they knew that we would be heading south. After all it seemed like there was a way to get to Horde areas by going east as well.

Bree suspected that they were likely guarding those paths, too. A small neurotic part of me, however, couldn't help but feel that Nicholas knew exactly where we were going and that he was the one who had started the manhunt.

Never mind that I knocked out a prince or anything. This little voice in my head was dead set on it being Nicholas, no matter what.

Like I said, neurotic.

Our only other option was, well, to swim.

That's why it would have been easier if I was undead. Bree could make it across the way easy. Heck, she could just walk along the bottom of the river and pop up wherever she well pleased.

My whole breathing thing made matters more difficult.

Pesky thing, those lungs.

And so while I slept, Bree gathered the materials we would need to make a rope. See the current was actually a lot stronger than it looked. At a glance the waters were calm and even. According to Bree, though, there was a wicked undercurrent that would catch my feet if I tried to swim it.

So the plan was that we would tie me to a log and Bree would swim across first, dragging me after her. The log would keep me from sinking too far under the water, though it made me concerned that I would be easily seen from the air. Bree assured me things would be fine.

Somehow, though, I couldn't go with it. It just…it wasn't practical. And I wasn't about to let this end with getting caught by a stupid patrol.

That's when I got a better plan.

The next time a gryphon rider flew past, we set our log adrift so that he would see it. As we'd hoped, the rider landed after flying close enough to see that the log wasn't important. He alighted and wandered the shore for a few minutes, just to see what had knocked the log loose.

As he drew further inland, thanks to a misdirect or two, we came around behind him, knocked him out, and grabbed his gryphon.

I hate gryphons.

This one was unbearable and bucked and flailed the whole way across the river, but we got it to land a ways into Duskwood, without either of us getting impaled on tree branches—they do seem to be denser south of the river.

Not gonna lie, we had sort of hoped to take the bird all the way down to Booty Bay—relying on a portal was already pretty sketchy, with my resistance, and so Bree had decided Booty Bay would work best after all, seeing as, even if Fizz couldn't help us, we could still catch a boat across the way—but that wasn't gonna happen.

Gryphons are the spawn of Satan.

So we left that stupid bird-lion thing, alone and disoriented, in the woods as we continued south.

We'd made it fairly far when we hit mountains and had to start heading east. Bree said we were gonna end up near some alliance towns, but that we would likely be able to slip past, if we were careful.

She didn't say it, but she was worried. We'd left ourselves open to being followed when we stole the gryphon, and even if it took them a while to find it, they would know to move their search from Elwynn to Duskwood. Worse, they likely knew we were heading into a place called Stranglethorn something or other.

It felt like that proverbial noose closing in.

Also, it didn't help morale between us what we—I—had to subsist on spider meat. As we went, I felt a little like Bree was babysitting me. Like I was some pet to be coddled.

After all, I didn't understand anything about what was going on. And it just baffled me. Surely, I couldn't actually be crucial to fixing this…hiccup in time or whatever it is.

But she just told me to have faith. That everything would be explained in time. I just had to trust.

The one good thing that did come of this was that she kept talking to me. She wanted to know my current story, to see if she could piece where things had gone sideways.

Unfortunately, I apparently hadn't had a lot to talk about when we met before, and she had to go off stories she'd heard, instead.

And seeing as I couldn't really remember most of these stories, that left us really, really uncertain.

She kept telling me that whatever point had been altered could have been something ridiculously simple. Something not necessarily small, but critical. A glance down an alley at the right time, a misstep, a breeze that made me pause for a few seconds, even.

It was all such a bizarre concept.

I guess that's kind of like the butterfly effect, though? One tiny piece gets shifted and suddenly everything is different.

What I've been thinking about, though, is the fact that someone had to have made that change. Someone went out of their way to make sure I didn't save my world.

But who?

Bree says it's probably the Burning Legion. They wanted my world, so they found a way to get it.

I couldn't help but think that maybe it was someone else.

Who, I couldn't say.

Just thinking about it, though, gave me headaches.

And this was the kind of headache that would get better with conversation.


	18. An Unexpected Reunion

I have to say that our trip went really smoothly, and I'd never really stopped to consider why.

I guess I just thought that we were being super stealthy. I mean, I made Bree promise not to kill any of the Alliance that came after us, because I didn't want people I knew to die just because I was doing something possibly stupid.

So far as I know, she stuck true to her word. However, it wasn't until we hit Stranglethorn Vale that we found that just maybe we had more than blind luck on our side.

We had a dragon.

Let me back up.

So we'd avoided the roads for the most part, sticking to the wilderness, which, by the way, was filled with all kinds of weirdness. Mostly, it was just untamed, crazy worgen. Which made me feel terrible, because every time we had to fight one, I thought about Eric and how he was such a decent guy. It also made me worry that he might end up like this one day, a mindless beast, unable to tell friend from foe.

Bree just muttered unpleasant things under her breath whenever worgen were brought up. Apparently undead and worgen don't get along very well, though, according to Bree, it's not their fault. It was that Garrosh Hellscream fellow.

Good thing that he went through that weird portal thing, then. Bree's happy about that, for sure. I don't think anyone's anything but happy about him being gone. Kind of sad that someone can sink so low that they don't have a single friend in the whole world—worlds even—but from the things I've heard, he really did ruin it for himself.

I shouldn't feel bad for him, but I kind of do. Maybe it's because I was never directly affected by his atrocities, so I don't understand the impact or something.

I don't know.

However, we'd been sticking to the woods, rife with worgen and ogres—I'd never seen those before, to be honest, and they were rather scary, though they were also fortunately, very slow—and giant spiders. The spiders were the scariest part, to be honest, especially how they could seemingly disappear on us. Bree always caught them before they could eat either of us, though.

And, not to brag, but I did take out a few of them myself.

Really should have started on my training sooner.

Though...the more we talk about my world, the more dreams I have about that other life and…the better I'm getting at fighting. My mind understands all the tricks and moves that Bree does, but physically, I'm not quite there.

It's led to more than a few pulled muscles. Fortunately, Bree is an alchemist, and she makes great healing potions. They keep me in top shape, whenever I get overwhelmed.

A little part of me worries that maybe I shouldn't just blindly accept everything she makes for me, but, well, she's been nothing but helpful so far.

I remembered meeting her, by the way. I remembered saving my world, and that the boy from Belgium was named Michel and that I was horribly jealous of him. I remember having Horde friends, but some of their names still elude me.

It's coming back though.

Little by little.

I remember that Clara died.

That's gotta be the weirdest bit. To know that in my reality—If that's what those memories really are, and I pray and pray that they are...they just feel right, you know?—that some of the people I know now are dead is...

Unsettling doesn't cover it.

Horrifying, maybe? Unbelievable. Terrifying.

I could go through some more synonyms, but you get the idea.

It's sort of made me wonder. If I set things right, back to how they should be, will Clara be dead again? That...it wouldn't count as me killing her, would it?

And how many people are alive now because my world did fall? How many were saved because it didn't? Is there some quid pro quo that I can look at? Is there a way to weigh the lives saved in each scenario against one another?

Is one the way things really _should_ be? If I change things back, is that the wrong timeline? Is that why Derres wouldn't help me?

I have to say, it's all so...stressful to think about.

But Bree says that she wouldn't have been allowed to come find me if this was the right timeline. She pointed out that the dragons do guard the time ways, and very strictly. If my world had been meant to fall, then she wouldn't be here, and I'd still be back in Stormwind, wondering if maybe I ought to listen to Clara and go on a date or two with Eric, just to see if things might go anywhere.

I don't know. I really don't.

I try to stay confident in what we're doing, but...there's a lot of doubt.

And it just got worse once we finally had to hit the road.

See, they were expecting us. Bree muttered a few things about how if I was dead, we could have just walked around the edge of the mountains that bordered the ocean, but seeing as I have to do that pesky breathing thing—still—It wasn't an option.

So instead we got to play with guards.

And there were a lot of them. I guess that was the difference between Elwynn and Duskwood: far less ways for us to escape, which meant more focused search efforts.

When we found the blockade, we kind of mulled about in the shadows for a bit, debating what our next move would be.

I was getting stronger, faster, all that, but I was still no match for max level guards. By the way, there's this weird power structure system in Azeroth that lets people understand each other's feats and adventures with a number, but I don't really get it. They call them levels.

I call it elitism.

Whatever.

I am not max level. I think Bree might be, though.

So once again, it was me who was causing us difficulty.

She suggested we just run—in case you're wondering, I did ask her about whether she had a mount, but she said sneaking into Alliance territory had required her to leave her skeletal dragon behind. Of course she rides a skeleton, you know?

But I suppose it makes sense. Undead mounts require less grooming and obviously they don't need to be fed or sleep. It would make sense that a person who doesn't need any of that wouldn't want to waste time on a mount that does.

I think.

But she said once we were in safer territory, she'd have the beast come to us. We just had to get there, first.

Past the guards.

Who we couldn't just charge. Because even if Bree could get past them and outrun them, I couldn't. Pretty much every plan ended with me not being strong enough, and it was frustrating, because there was that part in my mind that knew that I _should_ be strong enough.

Finally, we decided on a riskier plan. We'd have to split up. I was to go first. I would use one of the tinctures that Bree had that would make me look like a different person for a whopping fifteen minutes. Hopefully it would be long enough for me to get to the blockade, state my business, and get far enough down the road that they wouldn't notice when it wore off. Then, after I was safely through, Bree would charge them and run.

She said I was still clumsy enough that she'd be able to find me wherever I hid myself in the jungle. She was a little concerned about the possibility of tigers getting to me, but considering how well I was doing with the spiders, I wasn't too worried.

Apparently my spider slaying prowess didn't mean as much to her.

So. We were all set to go. I drank down my tincture, she gave me the thumbs up that it hadn't made me look like Prince Anduin or anyone at the blockade, and I headed down the road, trying not to look suspicious.

The guards stopped me, inspecting me with rather critical looks. When they asked my business, I tried to say it was my own. They didn't buy that. I let my general panic that they were stopping me for so long lead and words just fell out of my mouth. So I told them, "Look, I owe a goblin, and I'm already late. Have you ever owed a goblin? I'll have the entire cartel breathing down my neck if I don't get down there and pay up. Are you gonna be my personal body guard?"

It was a technique that had always worked for me before, and sure enough, the guards simply rolled their eyes and motioned me through.

Which would have been nice, but my time was running out.

I did my best to powerwalk and not look over my shoulder as I headed down the road. Even with the bend in it, there just wasn't enough space. I was going to change back, and we'd ditched the cloaks from before because they were so ornately designed that they'd obviously be recognized—in case you're wondering, when we stepped out of the cell, we told the guards that Wrathion had wanted time alone with the prisoner and that we were to check out where the prisoner had been found.

Instead of doing that, we'd snuck out over the wall and ran like hell.

So back to the present. I was walking into the northern most reaches of Stranglethorn Vale, as fast as I could. I could feel the tincture about to wear off, too. I could feel their eyes one me—seeing as I was the only traveler that day, they probably didn't have much else to pay attention to—and I knew that the second I switched back, they'd be chasing me down. And they had mounts. Gryphons.

Monsters.

My irrational distrust of gryphons makes sense again, with my previous memories, by the way.

Just as I started to change back, I heard a guard shout. Despite knowing better, I glanced over my shoulder to see that they weren't looking my way, but in toward Duskwood. Bree had made herself known.

I took off running.

Part of me wanted to stay and help, but...we'd been over all the scenarios, and I knew damned well that I couldn't do much.

So I ran.

And looked over my shoulder as I hit a turn in the road that would lead me to safety.

And realized that Bree wasn't gonna make it.

There were more guards than we'd thought waiting, and I could recognize a few of the rogues who worked with Nicholas, too.

Bree was going to _die_ because she'd helped _me_.

And I was not okay with that.

Whirling around, I sprinted back and was surprised when—despite an initial resistance—my body finally seemed to catch up with my mind. I kicked one guard in the head as I reached the fighting, sending him crashing into another, and disarmed another as he turned on me.

If I'd been thinking about it while I was doing it, I'd have been pretty impressed. But I wasn't. All I was trying to do was leave a path for us to get through.

Bree realized what was happening, and we started working together, slowly pressing our way south.

Then a gryphon tackled me, and sent me flying over the edge of the bridge that spanned a small gulley that separated Stranglethorn from Duskwood. Bree jumped after me, throwing a potion in my hand as I tried to stand up and my leg gave out. It hurt so much.

I _always_ hurt that leg.

That gryphon was pissed off, too. I think it might have been the one we kidnapped, because it came after us with such vengeance that even the guards seemed taken aback.

As it screeched and clawed, and Bree struck out at it, just barely keeping it at bay, things looked bleak indeed. A quick glance showed that even if we escaped the gryphon, we were surrounded on either side by at least a dozen, if not more guards.

However, I saw one rogue who I recognized vaguely step over to an adventurer who seemed all too content to watch us get eaten by a dumb lion-bird.

"Call off your damned gryphon. We need them to tell us what they did with the prince."

Even as the man reluctantly rolled his eyes and rummaged through his pockets, no doubt for a whistle or something to call off his monster, something truly unexpected happened.

A large, sleek black blur fell from the sky and right into the gryphon with such force that it literally sent it flying into the ground a few yards away. I actually felt sorry for the poor thing, though I didn't have much time to think on it.

See, as soon as the angry bird was down, the black blur had swooped under the narrow bridge and up and around, landing on it, dark, ebony claws digging into the wood, cracking it to splinters as large, webbed wings stretched out behind a sleek form.

The dragon let out one bellowing roar that left all of the guards and rogues alike stunned and then, hopped down, narrowly missing us, to land near us. The creature's golden eyes met mine, and I could swear I saw its lips curl into a smirk before it motioned with its head for us to climb on.

It seemed quite displeased that Bree was first on its back, though it ignored her and hopped over a step or two so that I could limp to its side. I could hear shouts as Bree helped to pull me up onto the dragon's back.

"The damned thing was working with them!"

More stuff that didn't make any sense. Yay.

I didn't have time to think about it, though. Even as a few daggers glanced off the dragon's scales, it flapped its wings once, and with a powerful gust that knocked back the few who'd dared to charge in, we were in the air.

As a few of them tried to mount up and follow, I couldn't even pay attention to them, because quite abruptly, I knew exactly who it was who had come to my rescue.

Brath.


	19. Twisted Timelines

So. Things are... Weird is an understatement.

See, I may not have all of my memories back, but I remember that something was wrong with Brath. Like, crazy wrong. Like, he was losing himself to some inner battle I can't remember.

Yet here, now, he seems fine.

Plus, he seems to know Bree. And I remember that he wasn't around when I met her. So that's...

I've felt like a fly caught in a web before, but this... This screams that there are machinations going on beyond what I can see, crazy things, big things.

I still don't understand how I'm important to fixing time, and how Brath can be here at all. I've asked him twice and both times all he did was, well...

The first time he asked if I knew who he actually was. When I regaled him with a few tales, he got excited and nuzzled me, which I am ashamed to say completely distracted me from everything. The second time he skipped the questions.

He hasn't shifted out of his dragon form yet, either.

I know it's him, but...

Something is really, really, really off.

Then it hit me. Alternate timelines. If I never met him in Stormwind, shouldn't he still be Mr. Blackheart's mount?

We're camped out about mid-northern Stranglethorn right now. When we went under the trees, to lose our pursuers, I thought he was gonna land or something. Nope. He kept flying in crazy patterns, too. It was completely terrifying the way he kept just barely missing all those giant branches, but I'm pretty sure the Alliance have no clue where we are now.

I don't know if we know where we are now.

But Bree is pretty psyched—though also a little worried, but then, everyone gets that way around Brath. And anyway, she says this is going to cut down our travel time significantly.

But back to Brath. I finally asked him about him being Mr. Blackheart's mount. At that, he sort of sat upright, wings folded against his back, tail curled around his legs, and drummed his claws into the earth slowly. "You...hmm...you've always done well enough with the inexplicable being explained, so I suppose I can tell you, if you really, truly want to know."

"I do."

"Truly?"

"I wouldn't have said yes, if I didn't," I muttered, noticing the way Bree seemed to pause. The way she was watching me made me worried. It was like she thought I was going to find out something I shouldn't know.

"I…timelines can be tricky, Amy. I don't specialize in this area, but, well, the Bronze Flight controls time in this world. They can see…alternate realities, if you will. They can look at a decision someone has to make, and tell what each choice will lead to. They can see how certain choices combine to make something catastrophic," he paused and added, "or amazing. Near as I can tell, we must have somehow ended up in an alternate reality, with an early choice altered in our past."

I felt myself pale. "So…if we're not in the real timeline, what does that mean? Could we just disappear?"

"Not quite. I don't really know how it works, but it's nothing so terrifying, I'm sure. We will fix this, and it will be like it never happened." Brath shook his head, his scales gleaming in the dim light. "We might have strange dreams or senses of having done something before, but otherwise it will be as though it never happened."

"So…are we in the intended timeline or is this the way things were supposed to play out?"

"Do you really need to ask if you were meant to save your world or not?" Brath cocked his head sharply. "I'm surprised in you, Amy. You're not one to falter."

"Then maybe you need to remember more," I muttered. I could quite clearly remember having doubt after doubt about everything. About Greg. A pain flared in my chest at the thought, and I pushed it down. I think I'm avoiding some truths right now, but it's a lot to take in, you know?

"This is not the timeline we want. We will go to the Bronze Flight, and they will help us right this." He frowned. "Last time, we flew across the ocean, but we had no one looking for us, so we had leisure time. Now...I do not think it would be wise to take that course. At least not until they think we are elsewhere."

"They seemed to think we did something to the prince."

"We did," Bree offered. She'd relaxed after Brath's explanation, but I couldn't help but feel that something was still off. I shook it off.

"They said they wanted to know where we took him, though," I specified. "We left him in that cell, so shouldn't they have found him when they went to check on you or something?"

"I'm sure they did." Bree waved her hand dismissively. Her voice was a bit raspier than usual when she was exasperated. "They must have told people that we did something to encourage them to find us faster. He's probably sitting back in his cozy little castle, playing chess with nobles."

"And Prince Wrathion."

"I'm sorry, what was that?" Brath was suddenly right next to us. His ability to be so big and move so quietly was a little disconcerting. Perhaps he was a dragon rogue. Though it seems like he could use magic or something, too. My memories were still a little fuzzy.

"Oh, right. He's your little brother, isn't he?" I perked up. For the first time, I could remember some of my time with Prince Wrathion, the uncanny meetings in my world, where he stressed saving his flight. "He's friends with Prince Anduin, I guess?"

"You've seen him."

"We knocked him out to escape Stormwind," Bree grinned.

Brath abruptly laid down and pulled a wing over his head. "You dumb, dumb mortals. Why would you knock out a dragon prince?"

"Well, it was that or invite him along for the ride," Bree muttered.

"No wonder they're so intent on getting you," Brath muttered. "And it probably hurt our cause that I made myself known..." He paused, considering it. "After all, in this timeline, my dearest sibling is still trying to murder our kind instead of saving them."

"In this timeline, that is saving them," Bree offered.

Brath simply nodded.

"But I thought it didn't work?" I asked, finally remembering what had been wrong. "You were losing yourself to the old gods."

Brath stilled, turning his gaze toward me. His claws drummed against the ground again, the thuds muted by the dense foliage around us. "I see. I think, my dear Amy, that whoever is messing with the timelines attempted to ruin our victories a few times before this split was created. It is likely that they attempted to make me crazed in an attempt to make your world fall, but messed up _when_ I was to lose my mind. If I lost it early enough, I could have just eaten you before you found help, after all."

"You bit off one of Zenta'ri's fingers."

"That's hardly a sign of insanity," Brath muttered. "Sounds more like the toad forgot his place-" He paused when he noticed my frown. "Ah, forgive me. I've forgotten how much you liked your mortal friends. I shall try to remember." He gave me a toothy smile, his razor sharp teeth gleaming.

I frowned, but let it slide. "So...with them after us—"

"And my brother."

"—are we going to still head to Booty Bay? Or should we try a different route?"

"Aside from flying straight across, which would be a poor choice, our only other options are to go all the way north and catch a zeppelin, which won't happen because the forsaken will end any human in their lands long before we can reach it, or to find someone who can create a portal, which will be hard—"

"Because of my resistance."

"That can be overcome, with excess magic," Brath dismissed my concern. "It will be hard to get to a place where all three of us would be welcome. Alliance cities are out. Even if you hadn't aided an undead, Bree wouldn't be able to go with us." Brath nodded toward her. "And in this timeline, you will be killed on sight if you show up in a Horde establishment. So to answer your question, yes, Booty Bay is still the best route. Perhaps we can recruit your little goblin friend to port us to Gadgetzan."

"Would that work?"

"It's close to the caverns, and would save us time with crossing the ocean. If we do it right, we might even be able to get there before the Alliance realize we're in Kalimdor. A head start would be much appreciated."

"And needed," Bree added.

Considering I had betrayed the Alliance for this, I had to agree. However, it made me wonder if Fizz would want to get involved. This was likely to drag him into a manhunt.

Perhaps we could claim he was kidnapped?

Perhaps I needed to make sure he'd want to help us before planning out excuses? Or would it be better to have them ready in advance?

Regardless, with Brath around, it felt like we had a real chance to fix this. Suddenly, this wasn't some farfetched hope. See, even feeling that this was the right course of action, it hadn't felt like something I could really accomplish. More like something I'd die trying to do, instead.

I still have so many questions, but now that I've gotten _some_ answers, I feel like there's finally, truly hope.

My world _was_ saved once. We can do it again.


	20. Stranglethorn

It's taken us a little over two weeks to get all the way down to the Cape of Stranglethorn. Flying straight there, it shouldn't have taken more than a few days, but we couldn't very well do that. See, hypothetically speaking, we _could_ have gone straight, but—even if the Alliance hadn't figured out precisely where we were going—we likely would have run into _someone_ looking for us.

So instead we went somewhere super cheerful called the Swamp of Sorrows. Sarcasm. It was squiky and overcast the whole time we were there. Bree stopped off in a Horde settlement and got supplies—I'm the only one who really needed them and felt bad that the pit stop was sort of my fault—as well as her mount, and sent off a letter to Fizz. Rather, she sent it to the barkeep in Booty Bay and told him to give it to Fizz, with a few coins as incentive. We really can't be too careful right now, with all of the SI:7 and adventurers hunting us down.

I'm getting really suspicious, though.

I mean, Brath never got along well with anyone aside from me and Mr. Blackheart. And even I could tell that, despite the weird bromance, he'd let Mr. Blackheart burn in an instant. I've always been the only one he really worked well with. Sometimes it was annoying how he barely tolerated my friends, but a lot of the time, it felt like I still had a home… if that even makes sense.

Petty jealousy strikes again.

That was my first thought, anyway.

But, you know, I don't think it is jealousy. I was so happy for answers earlier—and for Brath being around—that I never really stopped to think about _what_ I was being told. Some of it seems a little sketchy.

Like, if it's just dragons seeing possibilities for alternate timelines and then directing things in a course it needs to go, how did this get messed up? What changed ours? I know that Garrosh Hellscream did some weird stuff, but as far as I can tell, it was pretty much solved when the portal to that other world went down. Yeah, some people were lost, but maybe they'll make it back.

And weren't people saying that Garrosh's actions had literally made an alternate reality? What if this is an alternate reality, with mine still moving forward, just without me? What if I swapped places with this timeline's Amy? What if she's evil?

As is probably obvious at this point, I've been worrying a lot.

But, it was clear that, looking back, whatever truth was being kept from me, both Bree and Brath were in on it.

...

Why do all of Brath's friends' names start with B? It's really, really weird. Granted, he has a whole two, but that's hardly the point. I've been remembering more and more, now that he's around, too. I remember Greg's betrayal and all kinds of miserable things that Bree hadn't known about to remind me of.

But now I'm way off topic again.

So paranoia aside, we dropped off that letter, telling Fizz to meet us on the coast, a bit away from Booty Bay, so that we wouldn't be noticed entering the bay. If there are rogues involved, it still might not be a good idea to meet with Fizz himself.

I'm worried for him, too.

Sometimes I wonder how I haven't developed ulcers or had all my hair fall out or something. I'm always under so much stress…

But the plan is basically this: we go down to the coast a bit north east of where Booty Bay is. Then we wait for Fizz. Right now we're skimming the waters pretty far off the eastern mountains in Stranglethorn—I'm getting way better with remembering names. We went over the Blasted Lands to get down here, avoiding any areas that we thought they might be looking for us in. The tricky part is going to be coming close enough to land without being spotted, which I guess really revolves around how hard they're looking for us and what the scope of the search is.

Brath thinks they likely have a large manhunt going, especially since Bree found out from some guards in that swamp that both Prince Anduin and Prince Wrathion are actually missing. It has the whole of the Alliance up in arms.

That has Brath worried. He told Bree and I that, should we run into his little brother in this timeline, we are under no circumstances to let him know that Brath can talk. I guess that's part of why he hasn't turned into his human form yet? He's afraid Prince Wrathion will pick up on his magic or something?

Dragon stuff.

But, assuming we don't get intercepted or followed, then when we meet Fizz, it's like we were figuring before. Portal or boat ride to those caverns across the ocean, and then...

Then things get really fuzzy. Bree and Brath both say the Bronze Flight will help us fix things, but they're both really vague on how. Like, will there be some dragon who'll just pull a string and set the timelines in order again? Or...what?

Will something else happen? Will it be complicated? Will we actually be the ones going through time?

I know the point that changed, by the way.

Nicholas and his friends weren't supposed to help me. Them actually doing what I'd hoped for had been what had ruined everything.

Weird how that works. To think that I'd always been a little bitter about how mean they were to me originally, but in the end it was that meanness that saved my world.

And killed Clara and Randall.

I... I'm still thinking about that life versus life thing.

The Bronze Dragons will be able to explain it, I hope. I haven't tried to talk about that with Bree or Brath. I get the feeling they either wouldn't understand or wouldn't want to.

So, after almost a week of flying almost entirely over the ocean—stopping on tiny little rocks that couldn't even be called islands—I felt the winds shift as Brath finally turned inward. There were clouds overhead, working in our favor, and we'd waited until night, hoping that the darkness and flying low to the water would help to keep any watchful eyes from noticing us.

Bree was on her own dragon, by the way. If it can talk or could ever talk, I don't think it remembers how to, now. It seems a little mindless, which makes me sad. Dragons are so smart, after all.

But anyway.

We didn't fly too close together. Bree had actually headed into land earlier in the day, so that if one of us got caught, the other could still meet with Fizz and work something out. I guess there are rune things you can get from mages that let you teleport places without the mage being right there?

I dunno. All that magic-y stuff goes over my head.

It didn't take more than twenty minutes to fly in to land, and as soon as we were on the beach, I dismounted. Flying is one thing, but riding a dragon when they're running across the ground is another. And it is so painful.

While we were walking, I lightly tugged on his wing—I doubt I will ever have enough force to break a dragon wing, but I still like to be gentle, just because the webbed parts look so fragile (they aren't)—and Brath turned his head, eyeing me with mild curiosity. "Yes?"

"You'd be less noticeable in human form."

"To you," he replied calmly, though he did gently thwack me with his tail. Not enough to topple me over, but enough that I did nearly trip.

"And to anyone overhead," I pointed up. "A large black shape on the sand will stand out more."

He let out a low growl, swinging his head forward again. "I shall have to stand out, then."

"I still don't get why."

"What I do not 'get'," he said, dropping back to pace so that his head was near me, "is why you want me in my human form so desperately?" He gave me an innocent look. "Do you want a hug? Or something else perhaps?"

I shoved his face away, making a point not to look at him. "I know you're just trying to distract me."

"Yet your heart races anyway."

"Is it really so bad if Wrathion finds you?"

"Don't say the little devil's name, lest you summon him," he muttered, glancing around quickly as though he believed his own sarcasm. "I told you. In this timeline, there is no cure for the madness. He will end me."

"But you don't seem mad."

"I was freed when I went to your world."

"But if that's true, then since that never happened, you shouldn't be freed anymore," I objected, stopping in my tracks. "You're lying about something with that time stuff. I know it."

"Amy, now is not the time for this. Once we've fixed the worlds and set things right, then we can bicker until you grow weary of it."

"I don't want to argue for the sake of arguing, Brath," I snapped. "I just want to know what's really going on."

"And how do you know that what I told you isn't the truth?"

"I..." I scowled, crossing my arms and glaring up at the sky, looking for any dark figures that might be patrolling about. The night made it harder to see, and I realized how much it hindered as well as helped us. "I don't know."

"Then let it be until you can ask someone who will give you a more satisfactory explanation," he muttered. "My dealings are with the earth. If you wish to know how to compress stone to make gems, talk to me. If you wish to know how to weave time, I suggest you either accept what little I can tell, or look elsewhere."

It was a fair enough point, loathe as I was to admit it. It occurred to me that maybe Brath didn't know as much about time stuff as he'd seemed to, and that perhaps he was floundering with understanding it just as much as my pitiful mortal mind was. Unable to think of anything good to say in response, I finally just started walking again. He kept pace beside me, keeping his head near me.

As we continued down the beach, I finally asked, "So you can make gems?"

"I can."

"I didn't know that."

I heard his tail flick back and forth behind us as we went along. "Would you like me to make you a mountain of gold, accented with glittering stones to sparkle in the light?"

I rolled my eyes. Even in the dark, he could likely see the action. "I was just thinking about how that'd destroy the markets in my world. For rare gems and stuff."

"Well, it's not like I can do it with a blink," he retorted. "It takes a great deal of magic, and interrupting the natural processes for one's own benefit is generally frowned upon."

"So why was your automatic suggestion a mountain of gold?" I asked, not dwelling on any one point. It was nice to talk, just the two of us. It had been too long. "I mean, is that something you secretly wish you had?"

"Ah, yes. Because all dragons are hoarders, correct? I've read your world's tales." Brath lifted his head a little, indignant. "What happened to that Smaug character was most unfortunate."

"First, you didn't actually read Lord of the Rings," I corrected. "You read the back of a DVD case."

"You mean your world actually has stories of reasonable length? I thought you had a set number of characters you could tell things in."

"How you got twitter and literature mixed up is beyond me," I muttered. "There are a lot of good books. I had some on my phone. I could get you some hardcopies, too, if we ever make it back to my world."

"Ah, yes, the pessimism that got us through this mess once," Brath teased. "I was wondering when it would rear its head." When I glared at him, he blinked innocently. "Humans are creatures of habit, dear Amy. Once you've shown yourself prone to doing something, you will do it again and again. It is your nature."

"And it's your nature to act like a pompous ass."

"Would you love me if I was any other way?" He leaned his head closer to me, adding, "Would you love me if I was a madman?"

So. He's still really good at throwing me for a loop.

Even as I stopped in my tracks, not sure what to say to that, he seemed to lose interest in our conversation. "I do believe our goblin friend is waiting. How fortunate for us."

As we drew closer to the secluded spot, partially obscured with palm trees and other tropical plants, I could see Bree and Fizz waiting, already talking quietly among themselves.

When Fizz saw me, he let out a few low curses, though I couldn't make them out far off as I was. He didn't even wave. Instead, the air around his hands lit up with a blue light that shimmered and danced, leaving odd patterns as he waved his hands. When the portal appeared, I stopped.

I knew by know that I could go through one, but I vaguely recalled not liking that sort of thing.

Fizz darted up to me, though, and dragged me over, constantly looking around and scowling at Brath. "Ya couldn't have got a subtler mount?" He hissed.

I glanced back at Brath. "He's..." I didn't know what to say.

He gave the both of us an innocent look, filled with animal-like curiosity. So he was back into the charade that he couldn't talk. The portal's light lit up his features, making him foreign in that strange light.

I ignored that and faced forward. "Will I be able to—"

"I caught ya once, didn't I, kid?" Fizz asked, brow arched. "Just...go on. Before the SI:7 get here. They're all over the place looking for ya and ya damn friend here." He scowled at Bree as she curtsied. I glanced around a second longer, and Fizz gave up, instead simply shoving me through the portal.

Magic enveloped me, and I stumbled. My whole world was shimmering and light, magic swooshing around me in a pointed, dedicated path. In the past, it had always swept me along, allowing me only a few seconds discomfort.

Now, though, I could feel something was wrong. I was in the portal, on the path, but something didn't want me to go forward.

I looked down, expecting to see something holding me back.

There was nothing.

I thought I saw Bree for a second, though it was more like watching a ghost get pulled past. Then Brath's form seemed to go through me, disappearing along the way. Fizz followed last.

As he disappeared, so, too, did the pathway.

Suddenly, everything was cold, and different, and I knew that I had been left behind.


	21. An In Between

So.

This...

This isn't much of an update on my quest to save my world, but...

Well, being stuck in the void—or wherever I am—Is pretty boring.

Once you get past the whole, 'Oh dear god, I'm trapped in some strange place and never going to see the light of day again, why does everything have to shimmer and sparkle so randomly, what they heck is going on' thing, it's really dull.

Like, I'm pretty sure that wherever I am is where all Azerothians summon their magic from. I can see it shimmer different ways as it's pulled away. Sometimes it looks reddish and gets really hot, but it's always gone before the flames burst to life or the heat gets unbearable. It's the same with ice. It gets cold, but before it can get freezing or start snowing or something, it's gone to whoever called it.

Sometimes I see paths open up, and if I watch them really closely, I can see the person—or people—passing through.

It's eerie.

I tried talking to them. Heck, I even tried grabbing one or two of them—my reasoning was that if I could get a mage here, wherever I am, then maybe they could port me somewhere. Or at least I'd have company.

I can walk around. Despite that initial resistance, once the portal was gone, I could move.

I'm not really standing on anything, per se, but if I think about moving forward, and put one leg in front of the other, I can move. It's...weird. Because there aren't any real markers for location. But as much as the magic shifts around, winding through the emptiness, it does seem to move in certain patterns, and stick to certain intersections. Like strings wound together, getting blown by wind constantly so that they shake back and forth.

I've been staying near this one I first showed up beside, but I have wandered around a bit.

At first, I tried to run after the portal's path.

Then I thought I'd better stay still, in case they tried to come back for me.

Then I just gave up and started wandering.

I don't know that they have anything of mine to reach for me with, or anything.

So I'm stuck.

At least I seem to be outside of time, too. I haven't gotten hungry or needed to pee. I tried talking, but...

The magic reacts to words. It shimmers and twists around me and toward me, and...

Something out there is searching for me. I can feel it. At first, I thought it might be Fizz. It's not though. It's something...old. I can't really explain the feeling or how I know anything about what's looking for me.

It's just there, in the back of my mind. Like a little whisper. Sometimes, I think if I tried to hear hard enough, I would. Like, maybe it wouldn't be such a dull murmur. Maybe it would make sense.

Sometimes, I think it does make sense.

I've lost time, if that can even be a thing here. I mean, I've blacked out. I don't know if it's for a second or for days, but...I don't like coming back to, because I have trouble remembering things, like my name.

It kind of sucks. I save a world, forget about it, remember it, and then start to forget _everything_.

The one thing that's sticking with me, though, is that something is searching for me.

Like there's someone out there in this twisting nothing who knows I'm here, but doesn't know where to find me. And when I talk, they can hear the noise, just like the magic can.

And they want to find me very badly.

But I'm pretty sure I don't want them to.


	22. Slipped

"Miss?"

That was the first word that I heard, the one that pulled me out of…

I'm not sure what it pulled me out of, to be honest.

With that word, however, suddenly I was aware. It was like that word summoned the world to me…or possibly me to it.

Quite abruptly, the sky was bright—almost white from the light shining down, and pale sand stretched out in every direction, interrupted occasionally by odd, black crystalline formations. There was a quiet, continuous hiss of wind whisking sand across the ground, but aside from that everything was so… empty.

Glancing around, the sands continued uninterrupted for as far as the eye could see in front of me, but behind me, there were tracks that stretched off seemingly just as far.

My tracks.

I'd been walking for… I don't know how long.

Beside the tracks was a kaldorei woman standing next to her mount, watching me with a worried expression. I couldn't fathom why she'd be so concerned. Maybe it was because of the way her saber seemed afraid to get closer to me, like I might lash out and hurt them.

When I looked down, I expected to see claws or something that would explain the skittishness of the creature. However, I was just human, normal fingers, normal body. Normal me…?

"Miss…? Are you alright?" The elf was approaching me slowly, despite the desperate whine from her mount. It began to pace back and forth across the sand as though along some invisible line, never coming any closer to where I'd stopped. Her dark blue hair fell in a long braid over a bare purple shoulder. Her clothes were light so that she wouldn't be overcome by heat.

Heat…

Yes, it was hot. It took me a second to feel it, and abruptly I was uncomfortable. I started picking at my sleeves, wanting to roll them up.

My clothes were smudged with dirt, likely caked on from the winds here, but aside from that, they weren't ripped or suffering any significant damage.

Neither was I.

I brushed my hair back behind my ears as she stopped in front of me, head dipped forward as she appraised me.

"I'm Miloren Winterstar." She motioned to herself, smiling slightly. The tattoos around her eyes were purple streaks, like an imitation of claw marks running down her face.

As I stared up at her, her long, wild eyebrows dipped down. "Can you… can you understand me?"

Abruptly blinking, it occurred to me that I hadn't said anything yet. I tried to speak, but at first nothing came. After clearing my throat, my voice finally found its way back to me, though it was little more than a weak rasp. "I…can."

She looked so relieved. "Can you tell me your name?" She paused, straightening up as she glanced around, hands on her hips. She towered over me. "And maybe how you got all the way out here?" With another pause, she eyed me. "Do you know where you are?"

Without thinking, I nodded, "Silithus." I proceeded to give her the latitude and longitude of where we were presently, as well as the number of miles to the nearest Cenarion outpost.

Had that been where I was headed before she found me?

I couldn't quite remember.

Even as I tried, I realized that she hadn't responded yet. Looking back up at her, I found her regarding me with an expression that was impossible to read.

Tilting her head a little to the side, Miloren took a step back, as though to inspect me again. "So you know where you are."

"Yes."

"So you…don't need help?"

Help…

"Yes…"

"You do need help?" she crossed her arms.

"I need help," I whispered, trying to remember what for. There was something important. A world was crumbling?

No, that didn't make sense. Everything was where it should be. The Earthwarder was destroyed and the balance was returning…

So why did it seem like something terrible had happened? Like something was out of place…

"Can you tell me your name?" Miloren pressed, drumming toes into the sand beneath us and making little divots that were quickly filled in by that continuous march of grains at the winds' behest.

Even as I opened my mouth to answer—names are the easy questions, right?—I frowned. "I…have a name."

"Most people do."

"I…It's…" I frowned. I could think of plenty of names.

Cenarion Hold, named after Cenarius, allied to Malfurion Stormrage and Tirande Whisperwind. The leaders of the Kaldorei after the fall of Queen Azshara, when the Well of Eternity fell.

That… was a long time ago.

"Come on, then," Miloren patted my shoulder and nodded toward her mount. "I'll take you to the hold, and we'll see if you can't get your memory working again."

I wanted to argue that my memory was fine, that I could remember the hold in question when it was built, that I knew the druids had set it as far from the leylines as they could, not wanting to rely on them so heavily as their Highborne counterparts had.

When I opened my mouth to, however, her saber whined. I stopped in my tracks, and Miloren sighed, lightly swatting at her saber's shoulder. "You be nice…" The mount stepped back when I stepped forward. Frowning, Miloren retrieved a flask of water from her saddle and brought it back to me, holding it out.

I took it from her and stared down at it blankly.

"Did you have a mount? You had to have, yes? You adventurers are always flying about these days. Did something attack you in the air?"

"I…have a dragon," I replied, tapping my fingers against the flask. Brathrion. No. I couldn't tell her that name. Black dragons aren't welcomed in most places. "Brath."

With a laugh, Miloren shook her head. "Just what did you do to get a dragon to fly you around?" When she noticed I was puzzled, she arched her brow. "They don't make friends with just anyone, you know. I…it doesn't matter. Do you know what happened to your dragon?"

"Gadgetzan." I managed to stop myself before I could tell her the town's exact location on a map, as well as when it was built and how it was faring in light of the flooding in the eastern part of Tanaris. Something told me that most people didn't rattle off information like that.

"You got all the way through the crater and out here without your mount?" Miloren asked, bewildered expression only adding to her mount's agitation.

The names of places and things, of histories whirred through my mind in response to her comment, but I managed to push it back as I shook my head. "I followed a leyline."

At that, her expression shifted to irritation. "You followed a leyline." I nodded. With a curse, she shook her head and switched languages to a much older tongue. "Elune's light, but humans are stupid. Always playing in magic they don't understand. Is that why you're so grumpy, Nalaes?" She stroked her saber's muzzle. "Because you know a stupid mage when you see one?"

"I'm a rogue."

Miloren paused, turning slowly back to me, incredulity plastered to her face. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"I'm not a mage; I'm a rogue," I replied. As I finished, I realized I was speaking in her language. Some fragment of a memory told me this was alright—this was normal—but another part of me said this was different from before.

What had been before?

Vague, hazy images rose to mind, but it was hard to concentrate on them.

"You can't _not_ be a mage," Miloren argued, stepping back up to me. Then, she frowned and pointed at the flask she'd given me. "Are you going to drink anything?"

Blinking a few times, I looked down at it and then offered it back to her. "I'm not thirsty."

She stared at me. "You… I stumbled across your tracks days ago. I've seen no sign that you had supplies. Either you're a mage, conjuring what you need, or you're…"

"I'm not a mage," I insisted. I knew that much.

She pointed over her shoulder. "You're dripping magic."

As I followed her direction, I realized that the path through the sands wasn't footprints. After all, with this continuous wind, how could I have a trail of untouched footprints in my wake?

There was a shimmering essence in my wake, similar to footfalls, and also similar to puddles of water that might have dripped from me.

"It's from the leyline."

It was another detail that I just knew.

"And just how did you get to a leyline?"

"The portal went wrong," I whispered. Even that was fuzzy, though the image of a goblin came to mind. Fizzit Icesprog. Entrepreneur of the Steamwheedle Cartel, spy for the Horde, accomplished mage. Currently located in…Dalaran? That was a long ways off from Gadgetzan.

"A portal went…" As I looked back at Miloren, she let out a string of curses to Elune, tugging on her mount's reins and dragging the creature closer to me. "You be nice to her. She's not the cause; she's the victim." Before I could protest that I didn't feel like a victim, she swung up onto her mount and—with great effort—got the beast to come over to me. In a fluid movement, I was seated in front of her. "You'll be alright. I'll take you to the druids, and they'll be able to help with…this."


	23. Arcane Knowledge

****

It's been two days since we arrived at Cenarion Hold. I now have fifteen kaldorei fretting over me constantly, expressing their horror that I was lost in a leyline because of a careless spell.

Except that it wasn't a careless spell. I was intentionally held back.

I know.

I just know a lot of things, right now. I can tell you the temperature in three different units of measurement, and the exact longitude and latitude of my location. I can tell you the exact age of my new friends and how long the grains of sand beneath me have been grains of sand. I can tell you what they were before that, and where they came from.

If you mention a location, I can tell you exactly where it is, it's current population—broken down however you like—and all kinds of little details.

Miloren thinks this will pass, with enough time.

She said that magic and time are sort of similar, the way they permeate everything, and that I shouldn't have stayed as close to the leyline as long as I did. It's okay, though, because I couldn't have known. What matters is I did my best to not disrupt anything.

The one thing I don't remember is getting out of that inbetween place—well, the magical plane, really.

Miloren says that in a way she's glad that it was this. There are remnants of a cult out here in Silithus, and when she first came upon me, I was apparently whispering about being watched. She thought I might have been one of the ones touched by an Old God.

You know, I can't remember that. I mean, I remember being worried that something was looking for me, but I can't remember the actual fear. Thinking of it elicits nothing.

I wonder if whatever it was found me?

Miloren has asked me all kinds of questions. Who am I? Where am I from?

Those things are a little harder to remember, but they come back, when willed. Amy Ford, from Charlotte, North Carolina.

You know, it's odd, but I don't know where that is. In relation to everything else, anyway. It must be because the leylines here don't go that far. My world has its own leylines, hence the magical resistances and problems.

Miloren doesn't think I'm going to have much of a magic resistance anymore. She's right.

It's sort of like if you sit in the tub too long and you get all pruny? I sat in magic too long. I'm...steeped in it.

Again, she thinks it will get better, but probably won't go away completely. If it doesn't get better, she said she'll be very surprised.

Even if it doesn't, that doesn't bother me. Maybe it should, but I just can't be worried.

Miloren and the others say I'm lucky. I wandered in pure magic. If I'd gotten caught in anything fel, I'd be...different. More different. Different different. Bad different.

This is...not so bad. It could be worse. Obviously.

The Old Gods could have found me, Miloren has pointed out a few times, always relieved.

It's odd, but those are another point that means nothing to me. Kind of like the whole being searched for thing. I feel like I should know what the Old Gods are, and I think in a way I do, but if I think about them, it's like the magic in me just whispers, 'No.'

I'm not supposed to go there.

I have to say, sometimes I don't feel like me anymore. There are moments when I get so overwhelmed with this feeling that I can barely breathe. That I can say it's happened a lot in these last few days is also a good thing. Miloren keeps asking me questions about my world—I've managed to remember snippets, and she and the others said they'd heard about the Legion sweeping through other worlds, as well.

I think she's trying to ground me mentally. My mind does hop topics a lot, but it's not hard to remember what we were talking about. I can keep track of all of this stuff, really easily. Honestly, the only thing I have a bit of trouble with is that I sometimes forget I haven't responded yet.

However, after talking a little about the Legion and worlds and all that, she finally believed me when I said it wasn't a careless spell that got me lost. Then she said it must have been scary falling from my world and into the void like I did.

That's when I realized that she thought the portal I was talking about was one of those Legion gateways.

So I explained it wasn't. I told her of Fizz's portal, of not being able to move forward until it was gone. For a second, I saw her pale, but then she simply smiled and said, "I see."

Of all the things rolling around in my head, whatever she "saw" wasn't one of them. Maybe I should have left it alone, but I couldn't. "Fizz is a very skilled mage. I should have been able to take the portal."

"Yes," Miloren had mused. "If warlocks' pets can move through our world so easily, it shouldn't be that hard for you to."

"Something stopped me."

"Yes."

"What could do that?" I asked. Even as I asked the question, I knew the answer.

A dragon.

More specifically, one of the Bronze Flight. The very creatures I was trying to get to help me were, most probably, hindering me. That didn't bode well at all.

Miloren seemed to consider it a moment before giving me a measured smile. "I can take you to the Caverns of Time, if you'd like. Perhaps we can meet your friends there."

Tempting as the offer was, it made me uneasy. If time dragons were working against me, would it be wise to go to them? Surely, it had to be the time dragons who had stopped me. Miloren didn't press the issue, fortunately. She told me to think about it and left me in the upstairs room of the inn I was staying at in the hold.

When she went downstairs though, I could hear someone hiss that she shouldn't make offers she can't uphold.

She's a guardian here. It's not her job to leave, but to stay and keep the silithid at bay. She's been fighting them for a very, very long time. Now that I'm a little more me, it seems wrong to know that without her having told me. It seems too personal.

It's not like I can see in people's heads or anything. I just… I can't explain it. I know a place. I know how long creatures and things have been in that place. How many, how long, how they've affected it. But I have to know their name before I can know that.

If that makes sense.

Otherwise, I can only give generic answers. Like, I know how Gadgetzan is doing as a whole, but I don't know how any individuals are doing there, because I never met them.

And unlike Fizz, I can't find Bree or Brath.

I wonder if the portal did something to them, too.

Something tells me it didn't, but…

But it doesn't give me any other outcomes, so I'm worried.

Miloren leaves me alone at night because humans need sleep, and we're not nocturnal like the kaldorei. The thing is, though, that I don't need to sleep. I haven't since she found me—an apparently before that, since she said my tracks were uninterrupted, and it took her days on her mount to follow the path.

I guess she saw me watching the hold from the upstairs balcony earlier tonight, though, because she came back up while it was still dark out. She asked me why I wasn't sleeping, and when I told her that I wasn't tired, she sat with me.

She was quiet for a long time.

I haven't needed to eat or drink anything since she found me, either. They say that's an effect of the magic that will pass, though I couldn't help but think that she was more worried about this when she found out sleep was beyond me, as well.

We got to talking, and I finally told her about all the facts bouncing around in my head. I told her I thought the dragons were after me. Just as I thought silence was going to be my only response, she finally sighed, slouching back against the railing we were seated beside, tilting her head back and then staring up into the sky without really paying attention to it.

"You must know those things because the leylines wind through every place in Azeroth and can detect magic. Life itself is a sort of magic. So it makes sense the leylines register how many people there are and where. I wonder if they have a mind, as we'd consider it…." She caught the end of her braid where it dangled beside her and idly swung it, the loose strands making slow, lazy circles through the air. "It might not be the dragons, though." When I tilted my head, she hesitated. "You know the Old Gods I mentioned before?" As she brought them up, I felt strangely neutral—was it just that magic itself had no opinion of them, or was it something else? "They corrupt. They are locked away, but they whisper and influence minds."

"That's how the Black Flight fell." Brath came to mind as I spoke, and I wondered if he was still pretending he couldn't talk. Some piece of understanding settled into place, but before I could register it, Miloren was talking again.

"Yes," she nodded. "It is how the former aspect of Magic fell, as well." She paused. "And how the Bronze Flight is supposedly destined to fall."

I furrowed my brow. "So… the keepers of time will go mad?"

"The Bronze Flight does not speak of it much to outsiders, but I happened across the information some time ago." Miloren shrugged. "It might not be the Bronze Flight at all. It could be a corrupted dragon, or just an Old God. Or something else, altogether. And if it's any of those things seeking to stop you, the Bronze Flight will gladly offer their aid."

And if not, the story ends.

She didn't need to say it, but I could feel it, as surely as I knew the constellations in this foreign sky.

"Things might not be so dire. Yours is an intriguing tale, after all."

The part of me that needed that reassurance was growing—and most welcoming of her kind words—but the part that understood that if I was considered the source of an anomaly, I would be eliminated was still too strong. It left her words hollow.

On a side note, I've felt more poetic and all that since my time in the magic plane. I think that's part of what we expect to pass. I mean, I will be more me eventually, just never the way I was before.

Never completely.

I wonder what Brath will say to that.

I wonder if I'll be able to keep up with his schemes and the like better now. If I can, I think I'd like that.

Though, this kind of reminds me of that old book, Flowers for Algernon. This guy and this mouse get these boosts to their intellect that make them more intelligent, and the world is their plaything—relatively speaking. The mouse was still a mouse, after all. But then the effect wears off, and the guy can feel himself slowly losing all the knowledge, the propensity for knowledge, and he suffers horribly.

By the end, he's who he was originally, without any memory of the things he'd been capable of. In a way, I think that's a blessing, but that part where he slowly digresses is just... horrible. It always made me thankful that it was just a story.

Please, please, please don't let that happen to me. Don't let me sense all these things, all this information, and then let me feel it slip away. If it has to go, let me not know that it's gone.

Perhaps I'm just a coward, but there it is.

This might not be the me that I was, but it's the me that I am now. I want a chance to stretch my wings, so to speak. To be able to use what I know for more than just telling you the exact location of Gadgetzan on a map and the best trade routes to get there, depending on your faction.

Right now none of the information really seems to matter—it just is—but I bet there's something out there that I could use. Something that could help me, even, if I can just hold on.

We kept talking into the night, with her asking me about different places, checking if all my information was correct, looking for little hints of something that might give her a hint of just what really happened to me.

As we talked, my mind kept wandering back to what she'd said.

Could it really be corrupted dragons trying to destroy my world? Why? What good would it do them to destroy my home?

As I thought about it, to me, at least, it made more sense that the uncorrupted Bronze Flight would want to end my world. After all, I don't know what affect my world had on Azeroth, but if it ends poorly, then wouldn't they want to keep me from getting Azeroth involved with Earth?

I found myself wishing that I'd been stranded in the flow of time rather than the flow of magic, because maybe then I'd understand what was happening better, but the truth is, if that had happened, I think whatever was watching me, stopping me, would have been able to do more than just strand me in the magic plane.

Perhaps I should learn to be grateful for what I have.


	24. Taking Charge

Have you ever bathed in a moonwell?

I’ve been dunked in one about four times now, and I can’t say that I see the appeal. It’s a lot like a regular bath, except really tingly.

More magic.

See, after demonstrating some decent rogue skills for the kaldorei, it was determined that yes, I am honestly a rogue—paradoxical as that is—and not a mage trying to hide my huge, magic-y blunder. See, even though they’ve been really supportive, they all sort of thought I was full of it.

But! Mages and priests and all that aren’t nearly as stealthy as I am. So once again, stealth comes in handy.

Once they were certain I wasn’t naturally magical, they decided the best way to undo the damage was purification.

I’m not dripping magic anymore, at least, though that’s about all that it seems to have done in regards to making me normal again. Or maybe me being able to think more like me again is another result.

I don’t know.

The knowledge rolling around in my head hasn’t exactly left. It’s not as intrusive as it used to be, though. Now it’s more of a…well, it’s like having google in my head, accessible whenever I want. If I just let my mind wander I get to some pretty interesting topics. Apparently there must always be a Lich King, and the Zandalari are up to something. Again.

It’s not really relevant to my quest, though, so I haven’t paid much attention. It’s more like, all those little things that Greg used to go on about? All those details that he’d get frustrated at me for not remembering the last time he ranted about them?

They’re all there. And then some.

These days, I’d make him look like a novice.

Sort of.

I mean, there’s still some limitations to what I know. For example, I have no clue how I got stuck in the magic plane. Miloren and the others are clueless, too.

I heard them talking a few nights ago over breakfast, and they’ve sent for some super old, super important, barely tolerable mages to come poke and prod me, but I don’t think they’re gonna have the answers.

Not to be arrogant, but I’m pretty sure that any theories they can weave will already be in my head.

And they’re probably gonna go with Old Gods.

I have to say, I’m still really numb toward that topic. Like, when I talk to Miloren, I can see a spark of fear if the Old Gods are brought up. And a part of me registers that they should be terrifying, but they’re not.

It makes me wonder if maybe they did do something to me.

Maybe they are the ones behind my timeline and my getting caught in the magic plane.

Though… if that’s the case, I don’t get why they’d bother. Did my world somehow take them out or something?

I can ask those sorts of questions all I want, but those involve might have beens, and I don’t have any of that rolling around upstairs.

Most of me is more or less normal—okay that’s a total lie. I’ve got all that stuff in my head, I no longer have a magic resistance, and I still don’t need to eat, drink or sleep. I mean, I can do the former two, but the second I do I get this overwhelming feeling of being full. Like, need to throw up full. And that’s before I even swallow.

I kind of wonder if maybe my stomach’s full of magic somehow. Can it be pumped for that?

The kaldorei say that they’ve gotten rid of all the excess magic they can, through the moonwell baths.

They were considering trying again, but at this point it’s just a regular bath, and there’s really no reason to use holy water for personal hygiene.

So.

I have been able to remember more about Earth—my world. It doesn’t come into my head as though it’s mine anymore, though. If that makes sense? It’s like Earth is the game world, with me knowing random facts, while I _know_ Azeroth.

Like I’m a part of it.

While it’s awesome that Miloren and the others want to help me overcome this magic business, I think I can use it to my advantage. Them getting rid of it is just going to put me back where I was, which was clueless and useless, depending on everyone else. I mean, maybe being able to tell you how many goblins live in Everlook isn’t exactly pivotal to restoring my timeline, but I’d bet you anything that there’s something up here that will help.

And if I get rid of all of it, I’ll never find that key piece.

So, this might make me really unpopular with the elves, but I ran away.

Granted I have no mount, and they all do.

But, I don’t need eat or sleep. I can just keep going. And considering that I know the fastest way from Cenarion Hold to Gadgetzan, I figured I could get there without crossing anyone’s path.

When I came up with this idea, I couldn’t help but be amazed with how much of a genius I am.

Once I started wandering through Un’goro, however, the self-praise diminished somewhat.

See, I still don’t have weapons.

And avoiding living creatures is—in theory—easy, but the thing about living creatures is they’re organic. They don’t adhere as strictly to the data on them that’s all in my head as I thought they would.

Turns out some knight jerk has been provoking the devilsaur queen, and it’s led to relocations of quite a few of the other species.

Species which could all eat me. Though, to be honest, most of the ones I’ve encountered have seemed more scared than anything.

See, it’s like this. There are elemental aspects to the world of Azeroth: Magic, Earth, Time, Dreams, and Life.

Everything relies a little bit on everything, so to some degree everything can be registered within all five elements.

So, near as I can figure, I have access to basically all the magical notations of Azeroth.

Not to keep using that word, but _everything_ has magic, even if it can’t use it. There’s always some little smidgen of it inside. People, animals, plants, rocks, air, _everything_. I cannot stress that enough.

If I’d been steeped in the Life aspect, I’d be able to tell you exact migratory patterns and stuff. I’d be able to tell you life spans and probably the second someone conceived or—I could probably end that debate about what point life becomes life. Though, I doubt anyone would really listen to me. People are stubborn.

But that doesn’t matter, because I wasn’t overdosed with Life.

Because I was steeped in magic, though, I can tell where things have generally settled, because that’s where their magic has settled. A leyline will be affected by someone passing by, but it’s normally so miniscule from a brief encounter that it doesn’t leave a lasting imprint. However, if bunches of something or someone pass by that same spot over and over, it’ll alter the leyline flows. Basically it’s like a magic footprint.

So I can say, ‘Oh, goblins. Here,’ or ‘That place has been kept by the sin’dorei for years,’ and so forth. But it doesn’t mean that they’re exactly there now.

It makes me wonder if my knowledge about towns and populations is more census-y, as in it might’ve been accurate a few years back but isn’t as up-to-date as I thought it was.

All of this is to say that my perfect route to Gadgetzan isn’t so perfect. With that stupid knight and devilsaur running amok, creatures have left where they normally live and so the path that I thought was clear isn’t so much.

When that failed, I took to pretty much following the leylines, since most regular creatures actually tend to avoid those. If they’re not naturally magic, they don’t want to get too close to it.

That’s how Miloren found me again.

As much as the elves don’t want to admit it, they have a tie to the arcane, and they can sense it pretty well.

She had that going for her. Well, that and mounts are faster than footwork, even when the feet never stop.

I haven’t been getting tired, either.

I sort of think being so saturated in one element somehow cut my ties—or just weakened them—to the other elements. So maybe I will get hungry eventually, as time marches on?

Or maybe I won’t. I don’t know.

Anyway, Miloren found me, and she tried to insist that I go back. The mages that no one trusts will help me.

I told her that if any mage was going to help me, it would be Fizz. He keeps going back to Gadgetzan, so I’m pretty sure I can catch him once I get there. And if not, I’ll figure out where he is and get another mage to go get him.

Though Miloren seemed really skeptical, I told her that if it was her world she was trying to fix, she probably wouldn’t just stand around either. Even though she grumbled a bit, in the end, she agreed that it made sense.

So.

Now the two of us are on our way to Gadgetzan, to see if we can’t figure out what happened to me and how to fix the timeline.

My timeline.

Mine…


	25. Dreaming

Things just got a little more complicated.

And by a little, I mean a lot.

And it's all because I convinced Miloren to let me use her hunting knife while we traveled, just in case we got into a scuffle with something. I was being proactive, taking charge, determined not to be some little damsel in distress. I feel like that's the only role I play these days, and I'm tired of it.

If things are going to happen to me, I want them to happen because it was _my_ choice, because it was something _I_ set into motion.

I should have considered that taking charge didn't necessarily mean everything would go my way.

Still…

That all this happened because of a stupid dagger.

Let me back up.

So, I've told Miloren about my world and all the crazy stuff and everything. She and the other elves were surprisingly not surprised by any of it. Of course I left out some critical details, namely Brath.

It occurred to me that if she was going to take me all the way to Gadgetzan, she would need to know about my draconic lover.

So I told her.

And she was, again, not that surprised.

I guess when you live forever, you come to see everything in some form or another, so even if the story repeats slightly differently, it's not really new. Kind of like how all romantic comedies are all really exactly the same, just with different trappings and characters. I didn't remember Kelveris being that blasé about everything, though. So maybe it's less being an elf or immortal and just a Miloren thing.

Or maybe she assumes that anyone who gets stuck in magical planes and doesn't get phased by dripping magic through a desert is bound to be an odd one.

Who can say? I certainly haven't asked.

Anyway, I told her about Brath and how in my timeline he'd been saved, but then he hadn't, but then apparently he had.

That sort of interested her.

We were still in Un'goro, idly wondering about if something could have temporarily induced similar symptoms to being controlled to an Old God—like maybe he breathed in some toxic fumes somewhere and hallucinated or something?—when out of the blue we were attacked.

I wish I could tell you what it was, but…all I saw were shadows. Really, ridiculously fast shadows. Miloren tried to shoot one with her arrow, and it was like it _really_ was just a shadow. The arrow went right through it.

We both dismounted, with her saber trying to attack a few while she told me to stay close.

I, genius and progressive thinker than I am, pulled out that damned dagger. I wasn't going to sit by and be defended, you know? I remember my rogues moves and since my dip in the leylines, I am faster.

So I tried to sneak up behind one of the disembodied shadows—they were kind of like the weird smoke monster thing from Lost, I think, though it's been forever since I saw that show, and even then I was kind of young—and stab it. However, even as I got close enough, my budding magic sense kicked in, giving my pause at the most inopportune moment.

The thing that got me, stopped me dead in my tracks, was that these...creatures had to be magical to be doing whatever they were doing. Being ethereal and all. Yet, they didn't feel like magic at all.

Instead, they felt…

Empty.

Like, even though I was looking straight at them, they weren't there.

I was about to tell Miloren that I thought they were just illusions created by someone screwing with us, when the one I'd been sneaking up on got ahold of me and literally threw me into a tree. So much for being ethereal.

I had a whole two seconds to consider how little I understood what was going on before pain blossomed through me and unconsciousness took hold.

I wish I could say the weird stopped there.

But once I was out?

I don't remember how the dream started—probably with my teeth being loose or being naked in front of my math class or something—but as I was slipping through a double door in my high school, heading to the gym to dress out, I found the entire gym was steeped in eerie, twisting shadows. In the center was a softly flickering fire, and I wandered over to it, oblivious to the way the rest of my dream—my books and classmates—disappeared.

A figure was sitting beside the fire as I walked up, staring into it, expression muted and warped by the shadows' dance so that I couldn't tell if they were angry or happy, interested or bored, sad or relieved.

They patted the ground beside them, and I walked over and took my seat. The gym floor was gone, too, with simple nothingness in its place, though I wasn't worried about falling—sort of like how it had been in the magic plane, though this abyss was far from it. There was no magic here. Just emptiness.

"You're a hard lady to gain an audience with."

"People've never had trouble with that before," I mumbled into my hands as I leaned my chin into my palms, not sure if I should be watching the fire or them, my consciousness still in that hazy, dream state. In retrospect, I probably should have kept my eyes on them, but the fire danced so prettily.

"We're alike, you and I," the figure continued, as though I hadn't spoken at all. It made me wonder if I actually had. "My world is slipping away, falling through cracks and crevices as the Legion marches on."

The shadows lit up around us, and I could see the demons who had attacked my world storming cities with architecture I'd never even seen, inhabited by creatures I never could have imagined. My mouth hung open as I looked around, watching the onslaught with growing knots in my stomach.

However, it wasn't until I turned and saw a strange, foreign shadow ordering a group of felguards after some terrified, fleeing victims that I winced. I felt like I should have known what it was, but I couldn't place it. It was twisted, their form no longer that of a human, and part of me wondered if it ever had been.

"They didn't think much of your world, you know." A succubus noticed us where we sat and whirled on us. However, even as I braced for the crack of the whip on my skin, the whole scene faded away. Perhaps the demon had picked up on whatever spell had been used to spy on them? "Yours was just another to conquer and destroy, to leave in pieces around a dead sun."

The figure let out a dry laugh, but when I looked at where they'd been sitting, they were gone.

"And then you had to change things. You had to set things into motion. You breeched dimensions and fought them back. You had to deliver one of their strongest weapons into their hands."

There was such contempt in their voice. It rang all around me.

I stood up, looking around with growing panic. What was this place? Who was it who was talking? "What was I supposed to do? Just die quietly with my world? Let everything I've ever known and love just… die?"

"You really do think you're a hero, don't you? Valiant Amy Ford, savior of worlds."

I kept turning, trying to see where they'd gone. I started to walk through the shadows and then to run, looking for that shadowed figure or a way out or…anything that would interrupt the darkness. That emptiness felt like it was crushing me. "You can't just accuse me of things like this! I just wanted to help! I did help!"

"What is it your people say? The road to hell is paved with good intentions?"

"I couldn't have been wrong!" I insisted to the darkness, as it mocked me with that bodiless voice.

Another dry laugh met my cry. "The worst villains are the ones who don't know they're monsters."

"What I set into motion saved people! I'm not…"

"You mean like Clara?"

The voice sounded like Nicholas's, and I whirled around, expecting to see him right behind me.

Instead, I found myself meeting a gaze that bent all its will toward me, focusing, drawing my breath to a still, dragging me down into the writhing shadows.

Down, down, down….

"Amy!"

My eyes snapped open, and a myriad of shades of green and brown filled my vision. Pain flooded the rest of my senses, but even so, I couldn't close my eyes. I felt like if I did, I'd be right back in that darkness, and this time, I wouldn't come back.

It took me a second—and a few terrifying blinks—to bring my vision into focus, to see that I wasn't in some empty void, but back in Un'goro with Miloren.

She had been shaking me, but stopped when she I tried to bring my hand up to hold my head. It hurt too much to move, though. Instead, she looped an arm under my head and pressed a healing potion to my lips. I gulped it down thankfully, sighing as the aches throughout me eased almost instantaneously.

You know, I've never really wondered about how those potions work so quickly before. It seems like they should take at least a few minutes and yet… It can't be magic, because it worked on me before…

Perhaps that's something I would know if I'd been steeped in the world's essence of life?

It wasn't until Miloren was trying to force a third potion down my throat that I realized I was shaking uncontrollably. My teeth were clattering, and it felt like my bones might as well have been, too.

As she leaned toward me, asking what had happened, I looked up at her and shook my head. "I think I know what was looking for me in the magic plane."

"What was it? An Old God?"

As I thought back to the cloaked figure, I shook my head slowly. "No…"

"Then, what?"

"I don't…" I stopped when I nearly bit my own tongue off. After taking a moment to fortify myself, my shaking toned down to mere shivers and I shook my head. "I don't think either of our worlds has a name for that thing."

"You think a new world has gotten involved with ours?"

"I know it," I whispered. "And they're really angry."


	26. Crossing Paths

I may not need to eat or sleep anymore, but that doesn't change the fact that Miloren still does. Even so, after what happened in the crater, it was like something had possessed her. We stopped infrequently, often riding until she was nearly falling from her mount. She ate while we rode.

It couldn't have been comfortable, but she seemed intent that we get back to civilization. I think, if we hadn't already been almost to Tanaris, she would have tried to make me go back to Silithus.

I wonder how that would have ended? Because there's no way I'm adding time to this quest of mine.

Though…does it actually matter how long I take? If time was rewritten, doesn't that sort of mean that I could take hundreds of years and then have things reset as though none of that ever happened? That's how it always seems to work in the movies. All the terrible stuff happens and then poof! It never happened and everyone gets to be happy.

With the way my life twists, I sort of have this sinking feeling that it won't be that easy.

And what that shadow thing said to me while I was unconscious has been eating at me.

He called me a monster, said I gave the Legion a weapon?

What does that even…?

I'm glad I can't sleep. I think whatever that was could reach me again if I did.

Could it have just been a dream? The more I think about it, the more I want to say it was just a dream.

I mean, I woke up _so_ sure that it had been something crucial to what was going on, but…there are dreams like that, right? Dreams where you just wake up and think it was real, but it wasn't.

Part of me thinks I'm being really dumb for thinking that. That I'm leaving myself open for immense disappointment. And, you know, attacks from more shadow creatures.

But everything can't be grim and depressing, can it? I have to hit the bottom eventually. There's got to be a point where nothing worse can happen. You would think that would be when your entire world dies, but apparently not.

I'd like to hit that rocky, desperate bottom now so that I can start working my way back up.

All this thinking about creatures and worlds and misfortune is really bad for morale, too. I feel like everything I do is just useless. Like I'm struggling against an undercurrent or something, that never really goes away.

I haven't told Miloren about my doubts. She doesn't seem to have any, and I don't want her to think that I'm not confident. People are less inclined to believe in you when you don't believe in yourself, after all.

We arrived in Gadgetzan this morning. I suggested she get some sleep, but she said she had to send someone a letter first.

So we split up.

Fizz was not present in Gadgetzan. It only took me a minute to know he was in Rachet, up north. That's where his magic was, anyway. Considering he's a mage, he's probably there, too. I tried to find Brath or Bree using that method, but it didn't work. At first I was kind of worried, but I thought about Nicholas, too, and couldn't figure out where he was, so maybe it's just because they don't have magic?

Though, all dragons have magic…

It would seem like I would be able to track Brath.

But I can't.

So I went around to a few different shops, wondering if I should bother sending a message to Fizz or if he'd be back by Gadgetzan soon enough. I mean, his pattern has been for him to come back here once ever few days, so if I just wait, he should be by.

Assuming he hasn't given up.

I don't think he would.

But, I still had to wonder about Brath and Bree. Where were they? Were they with Fizz? No, he was using teleportation spells rather than portals.

Had they gotten stuck in the magic plane, too? Were they lost in different points, their luck failing to get them out? I still don't know how _I_ got out.

I'm banking on dumb luck, but who knows at this point?

There's so much I don't know.

It's like I'm getting more questions than answers, and that's another overly familiar, miserable feeling.

When I met back up with Miloren around lunch, she was at the inn, chowing down. The food looked good, but largely unappetizing. I wonder if I've lost any weight while I haven't been able to eat. I don't think I have.

Add that to my list of creepy side effects.

Does that mean I can't get more muscle, too?

"Any luck finding your friends?" Miloren asked between mouthfuls. When I told her no, she eyed me and then drummed her fingers against the table, clearly agitated with whatever notion was going through her head. "So…your goblin friend is a mage."

"Yep."

"And he has magic."

"I…well, yeah. That's…generally what mage means, right?" I eyed her, wondering if maybe the shadows had affected her somehow.

She rolled her eyes. "I just…what I mean is, he's open to magical channels."

"I think so?"

"So…rather than wait around for him to check back, what if you had another mage send him a magical message?" Miloren grunted before adding, "They can do that, you know. Or at least, they used to be able to. Magic travels fast. Much faster than couriers or birds."

"So you think we should find someone here to get in touch with him?" I perked up, glancing around and scanning the sparse selection of fellow patrons in the inn for any signs of robes or cloth armor. After all, no one comes out this far into nowhere without armor.

Even I have some. The night elves gave me a set from Silithus, as my clothes were so steeped in magic that they were 'unsafe' for use. It's not the best, as they hadn't expected me to go running off like I did, but it's strong enough for out here.

"I was thinking…" Miloren said, but trailed off before she could finish.

At first, I thought she was just pausing for a bite, but she simply held her bread roll in front of her, staring down at it like it wasn't a fluffy baked good, but rather a peephole into the secrets of reality itself.

On a side note, I can always tell what direction elves are looking in now. Before, with the glowing, it was nearly impossible. Now, I just know. Somehow.

She just kept staring.

Finally, I tapped the table in front of her. "What were you thinking?"

She blinked out of her thoughts, gaze snapping up to me, lips dipping into such a deep frown that it almost looked like a sneer. She caught herself and smoothed out her expression before shrugging. "You've bathed in a leyline. We did what we could to get rid of the excess magic, but there was _so_ much of it."

"I remember. I was there," I tried to joke.

She just stared at me. "Why don't _you_ try sending him a message?"

The world seemed to hold its breath.

We sat there, neither of us moving, gazes locked. The world had to have gone on around us, people talking, making plans, the breeze outside unsettling piles of sand and sending them billowing up and about, birds squawking.

All that stuff had to have gone on, but it felt like everything had just stopped.

There was this silence in my ears, weighting down my tongue, dragging against my vocal cords as though to make sure I never said another word.

Finally, Miloren rolled her eyes and took another bite of bread. "It'd be cheaper than any of the help from these goblins."

It didn't even occur to me that Miloren was going to be paying for such help. I swallowed slowly, slightly surprised that I still knew how. "I'm a rogue."

"A rogue who was steeped in magic."

"I'm a rogue."

"Right, you know what? Never mind," Miloren shook her head as she finished her lunch and then cracked her shoulders. "It's probably for the best if you don't do anything with that left over magic, anyway. It can be tricky, especially to someone inexperienced."

I nodded.

There was still magic in me?

I mean, I guess I knew that. After all, I'm a walking wiki. But still. That's just information. It's not fireballs or frost novas.

Miloren seemed content to let the subject drop, however.

We decided to do a two pronged attack, so to speak. We spread the word to every goblin we could that Amy was looking for Fizz, so that, should he get back and I not notice—I doubted that would happen because, well, magic, but still. After that, we set out to find a mage who could send him a message.

It helped that I had a full name to give—as well as coordinates and time zone and…well, a lot of stuff.

After I'd told the mage, she just kind of looked at me and then Miloren, narrowing her eyes. "Ya lot playin' me?" When neither of us responded, she pointed at me, "The reason she ain't sendin' him a message would be…? He cursed or somethin'?"

"She's a rogue," Miloren replied, dryly. It was the first indication that maybe she wasn't as pleased to let me not use my magic as she'd first seemed.

It was odd, all things considered. I mean, the kaldorei do not trust magic at all—most of them, anyway—unless it's of a druidic base. And yet she wanted me to try to use stuff I'd never even had before…

"Rogue my ass," the little goblin snapped, her blonde pigtails swaying as she eyed me. "What's this really about? This Fizz guy pissed off the Alliance or somethin' and ya tryin' to trick him into a trap?"

"What? No," I started.

She held up a hand, glaring from one of us to the other. "I ain't getting' involved in no faction conflict, ya hear."

"Fizz is from the Steamwheedle Cartel, not Bilgewater," I protested.

"And I'm supposed to believe the mage who's a rogue because…?"

Even as Miloren tried to reason with her, I stilled. I'd been considering trying to just do that thing where I talk and hope that whatever I say inspires or tricks someone into doing what I want, but it was unnecessary.

Gripping Miloren's arm, I started to drag her away while she was midsentence. "He's here."

Miloren didn't bother to ask how I knew—I think she understands more of my magic sense than I do, more than she's bothered to explain.

Even so, she let me lead her through the streets, loping along easily beside me with her long strides. As we turned a corner, I let go of her and broke out into a sprint.

"Fizz!"

He whirled around, scanning the street for a moment before his red eyes zeroed in on me—granted, it wasn't hard, considering I stood a few feet taller than most of the people out and about at the moment—and he started running toward me as well. "Amy!"

It wasn't nearly as sappy as those romance movies where they run into each other's arms—mostly since we're not, you know, romanticly involved—but we did totally collide, and even though I'm way taller than him, he managed to tackle _me_. We thudded into the ground in a burst of sand.

As we untangled, with a million questions flying from the both of us and getting largely lost in the settling dust, he finally sat back, his robe covered with sand and dust and sweat. He looked like he hadn't slept in…as long as I hadn't, really. The circles under his eyes were wicked, and his hair was a frazzled mess.

His ears perked up as he shook his head, looking me over to make sure that I still had all my appendages and whatnot, "Amy, I been lookin' everywhere for ya!"

Even as he seemed to notice that, while physically I may look the same, there was definitely something off, another voice interrupted our happy reunion.

"So have we."

As Fizz and I glanced to the side—Miloren was just catching up, too—I tensed.

The Alliance's missing princes had finally turned up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who reads!


	27. An Unsettling Revelation

Have you ever yelled at princes?

It's very unfulfilling.

They don't take any type of admonishment seriously, and if you raise your voice too much, they kind of give you this look like they're trying to figure out what you think you're accomplishing and why you think your tone will make a difference. Sort of like how people look at puppies who won't shut up—like, they'll tolerate it because the puppy is sort of cute, but they're starting to get annoyed?

In short, they're spoiled little brats.

Spoiled little brats who totally didn't care that they set the entire Alliance after me for kidnapping them when I didn't.

Basically, I screamed at them and made a scene. Or, I tried to. See, I got about halfway through the first sentence of my rant about what inconsiderate pricks they were—yeah, I was even breaking out the swear words—when Prince Wrathion interrupted me.

By walking over and sniffing me.

Like, really?

I'm ready to smack someone—you—and you're gonna come over and sniff me?

I know it's some sort of dragon thing, but still.

After that, he was content to stare at me with this bizarrely fascinated expression while I told him what an ass he and his bestie were, while Prince Anduin gave me that annoyingly condescending and baffled stare.

He may have been all kinds of nice and respectful at the castle, but I'm pretty sure I lost all his sympathies when I knocked him out.

…

If that's why they set an army after me, I'm gonna strangle them.

Though…a little off topic, but in retrospect, I'm not so sure they're besties. They kind of do this thing where they blush if you catch them looking at each other and stuff. Sort of like how people can be kind of uncomfortable around their crushes?

If I wasn't so pissed off at them for being asses, I would think they were adorable.

But I'm still pissed.

I will always be pissed, I think.

Especially since they don't even _care_ about me getting chased by Alliance. They didn't say it, but I'm pretty sure it _was_ 'payback' for knocking them out.

Getting bonked over the head is not the same as having an army sent after you.

An ARMY.

I'm so mad.

They just kind of stood there all nonchalant while I ranted and raved about common decency and saving worlds and how they were abominably lacking in consciences. When I was done, as I huffed and glared, Prince Wrathion decided that since my speech had ended, it would be the appropriate time to ask me why I didn't smell right anymore.

Well.

That was not the thing to say.

I mean, here I am, already angry and bitter, and he just dismissed my issues with him as…I don't even know? Plebian problems?

I almost ranted about that, but at that point I realized that it was beyond pointless. Sort of like trying to run through a brick wall or trying to explain to Brath why charities were a worthwhile cause.

So instead, as I quietly seethed and imagined a few scenarios in which I tossed the little brats off buildings and cliffs of varying heights, Miloren suggested that we go back to the inn and have a nice little sit down, where I could explain things to Fizz and the royals, and we could all catch up on what's been going on so that we could move forward.

So we did. And I did.

I addressed my story to Fizz, since looking at him didn't make me want to see if I actually could use magic and set him on fire. Like, I don't generally think I have that bad of a temper, but come on.

An _army_.

Which is probably still hunting me down, by the way. Who knows how long I have until Nicholas shows up, intent on bringing me in?

Though, to be fair, he'd have more than just false reports of kidnapping to take me in on. Though, I still can't see why he'd want to stop me from saving my world. I mean, maybe if I can offer him proof that there's a chance to set things right, he'd hop on board.

But…I need Bree and Brath for proof, and I don't have either.

See, there's no reason to recount what I've been up to here, so I'll summarize what happened with Fizz and the others. When I didn't come through the portal, Fizz and crew waited a day here to see if I was taking longer because of my magical intolerance. Apparently Fizz spent a few hours working out logistics for a possible time delay on the portal, proportional to my magic resistance and whatnot.

But even that said it shouldn't have taken me a day to get through the portal.

So Bree and Brath stayed here, while Fizz ported all over trying to see if somehow the spell sent me somewhere else. He'd even paid Alliance and Horde mages to check their cities. When that didn't turn up anything, he'd decided that Dalaran was the go to place.

After all, a city of mages was just the thing to figure out what had gone wrong with a spell.

So he'd made a portal and stepped through, talking the whole time about spell alterations and glitches in magicwork and whatnot. However, when he got to Dalaran, the others didn't follow him. He'd waited a while. Then, he'd come back to Gadgetzan to look for them—to see if maybe the portal had gone out before they could get through.

But they hadn't been here.

Well, just as Fizz had started to worry that they were lost wherever I was and that something had happened to his magic to make it wantonly unstable, someone had told him that they'd seen what sounded like Brath and Bree heading south from the town. He'd tried to catch up, but hadn't been able to find them.

Deciding that a person missing via portal was more important than a person missing via free will, he'd headed back to Dalaran.

"I'll have to go back to Dalaran again to let 'em know they ain't gotta help me figure out the problem," Fizz said, sipping at some ale as he spoke, "but after that, I'll help ya with whatever ya need. Don't just up and leave like the others, alright?"

"Honestly, it is probably still worth looking into," Miloren suggested, though she seemed uncomfortable with the thought of a city's worth of mages all focused on the magical plane. She'd lived through enough history to know how things like that could go wrong.

"It is being looked into," Prince Wrathion started.

However, before he could keep going, Fizz had shrugged. "Well, in the least, I gotta let 'em know they ain't lookin' for a person in there anymore. Just the source of the problem."

"Send a message," Miloren dismissed.

While Fizz seemed annoyed, he simply leaned toward her. "I don't know nobody in Dalaran well enough to send a message, and I don't trust—with all that's goin' wrong right now—that it would reach 'em. Better for me to go deliver it and come back."

"And when you get stuck in the magic plane, what are we to do?" Miloren countered. "Wait forever?"

While I think most of us there probably could wait—while not forever—for a very long time, with the exception of Prince Anduin, I shook my head. "I don't think Fizz will have a problem. He's gone through over forty portals in the last few days and nothing's stopped him."

Fizz seemed a little surprised that I could quote his spell number, but didn't say anything. Instead, he crossed his arms. "If there's somethin' out there that's stopping' people, it ain't after me."

"Who's to say it won't turn its attention toward you? You're worried a message might get intercepted, but not you," Miloren insisted. Then, abruptly, she just scowled. "Ignore me. You'll do whatever you want regardless."

Despite her defensive dismissal, Fizz did listen. He sent out a quick message and then seemed content enough when he got word back from whoever it was. "There. Now, assumin' that ain't an imposter or somethin', I guess it's taken care of."

Even as he sulked, Miloren looked at me. "Well?"

When I blinked, she motioned to Fizz. "Was the message he received a fake one?"

"You think I know?"

"You know magic."

I paused. That was true enough. Glancing at Fizz, I asked the name of the mage he'd contacted. When he gave it to me, I hesitated, letting my…magic sense or whatever take over. I rattled off the mage's full name, age, and last spell cast. It was indeed the message we'd received.

Fizz and the princes just kind of…stared.

Like, despite me telling them I'd been dunked in a leyline, it hadn't really dawned on them just what that meant. Like they hadn't really gotten it yet.

They got it now.

While they processed what had just happened, Miloren rocked back and forth in her chair, bored. "So then. We've gotten you to Gadgetzan and your mage. I assume you had a plan for what happens next? Or were you hinging on something else being here? That other friend?"

It was with great reluctance that I had to concede that she was right in her assumptions. Without Bree, I didn't really know what to do. I thought back to our discussions about my world and time and all that.

"They probably headed to the Caverns of Time. I think that was the plan originally, so maybe they thought that, even if I was missing, they could try to set things right. Or maybe they thought they could go back to before I was lost in the portal?"

"I would not suggest going there," Prince Wrathion interrupted.

Even as I turned a slow glare his way, Prince Anduin nodded, a grave expression replacing his earlier apathy at being yelled at. "Nozdormu is angry about something."

That made me pause. "I'm sorry, what?"

Prince Wrathion sighed, leaning against the table and then making a few vague hand motions. "We may have gone to the Wyrmrest Temple to get assistance tracking you down."

I cocked my head. There was a lot of magic at that temple. Old magic. Draconic magic. Even as the history of the place idly scrolled through the back of my mind, I motioned toward him. "You went to the aspects to find me?"

"Well, for a few reasons," the prince shifted a little. Then, he straightened up a little. "We thought the red dragons would be able to locate an anomalous life force in the world more quickly than scouring the countryside."

That reminded me of the army, which soured my slowly lightening mood.

Prince Wrathion sighed. "We were not given a direct audience. One of the lesser drakes mentioned something here in Gadgetzan, but…"

"Two princes chasing ghosts hardly concerned them," Prince Anduin lamented. He clearly didn't understand what was going on as well as his draconic counterpart, but still felt the need to participate in the conversation. "They were distressed about something going wrong. An anomaly that had nothing to do with life."

"A split in time?" Miloren suggested. Prior to this, she'd been so quiet, I'd almost forgotten she was there. However, even at her offer, both princes shook their heads.

"Nozdormu is upset about something to do with time, but his was not _the_ problem. Rather, whatever was wrong with time was the reason that he couldn't help with the issue that seemed more pressing." Prince Wrathion explained.

Miloren swore quietly. "It's a magical anomaly, isn't it?"

"Yes," Prince Anduin replied. Even as he started to ask how Miloren had guessed, all other eyes turned toward me.

I shifted a little in my seat, trying not to show how uneasy the abrupt attention made me feel. "I'm just one person. Maybe I'm a bit too magical at the moment, but…I can't be something troublesome enough to upset an aspect."

"I don't think ya are," Fizz offered, patting one of my hands.

While it was a kind gesture, it didn't help for long. Miloren sat back in her chair, crossing her arms and bending her head forward a bit, her ears a bit lower than usual. "But whatever trapped you in the magic plane might be."

Something strong enough to interfere with other magic might very well qualify.

Something else occurred to me then, that made my heart sink.

"It's in the dreaming realm, too."

That made all of them stop. However, Miloren picked up what I was saying first, shifting toward me, frown in place. "That thing from your dream? From the other world?"

The _other_ other world.

Well.

That brought about a whole new round of explanations—prior to that, I'd really just explained the magic plane, steeped in magic bit.

After reviewing how shadows had attacked us—that didn't really phase anyone, seeing as there are shadow priests and warlocks and the like who can summon that sort of monster—and how my dreams had been so…strange, this really uncomfortable silence settled over us.

Finally, Prince Wrathion was the one to break the silence. "I would wager that life anomaly must have something to do with this, too."

With an eye roll, I slouched down in my chair. "I have a name."

"You are not the anomaly, Miss Ford." Prince Wrathion's eerie gaze settled on his wrists as he set about fixing his cufflinks—as though they'd needed it. When he was done, he shrugged lightly, letting his gaze wander the room, catching on the occasional glimmer of armor or mote of dust. When he spoke again, he still wasn't looking at me. "Whatever happened to you changed you."

"Duh."

"In more ways that I think you realized." His voice was a bit sharper as he spoke, finally returning his attention to me.

I knew what he was going to say, because despite his doubts, I've been feeling it all the way to my core. I'd known since Miloren found me, but I hadn't wanted to face it. I'd kind of just ignored it, like it was something that could go away if starved of attention.

"You might have been foreign to this world once, but you aren't any longer. You are a part of Azeroth, Miss Ford. A part of this world."

And there it was.

The reason that it was harder to remember my Earth, the reason that it felt like the game world, that it felt less real.

My ties to my world had been severed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who reads! I hope you like the story!


	28. Guilt and Suspicion

So I've been thinking of taking up whittling.

I mean, I don't sleep anymore, so I need to do _something_.

So I've been going through lists of what I could do. Training to get better with weapons, for sure. Then, of course, I want to learn more about magic and Azeroth and how exactly it was that I was changed. I want to know the extent of my changes, as well.

Like, Miloren wanted me to try to use magic. Can I? It seems silly, but at the same time…

Okay, so, I've only really had a few hours to contemplate all this. Well, some of it.

All my companions are sleeping right now. We're not really sure what to do; we spent all evening arguing. See, I want to go to the Caverns of Time. I think it's my best bet for finding Bree and Brath. However, Prince Wrathion wants us to go to the aspects and explain everything—again—so that they can be in the loop and all that.

I think that I want to avoid the aspects, if I can. After all, it seems like whatever is attacking this world is somehow connected to me. Which is weird, but meh. I don't want the aspects deciding that giving me to whatever it is would be the simplest way to save their own world and then Earth—my world. It's my world, dammit. Even if it doesn't feel like it…

I just don't want Earth to be discarded.

I may not feel connected to it anymore, but that doesn't mean I want all those people to die.

But anyway, we were arguing for a long time before most of the party was just too tired to keep going. So they went to bed, with Prince Anduin saying we'd find a way to break the tie in the morning.

Apparently three plebs wanting to do one thing is equal to two princes wanting to do something else.

You know, I bet he thought he was being polite by considering our options on equal grounds at all. Brat.

See, Miloren and Fizz are on my side. They want to help me find my friends.

Friends.

I've had a lot of time to think these last few days, and I'm starting to wonder about Bree. See, who's plan was it that we use portals? Who seemed really insistent that we use some type of portal, above all else?

Bree.

Like, maybe I'm just being paranoid, but it feels like something's wrong there.

And I've been thinking about it more than just portals.

How did she know about my world? How did she get from my world to this one? How did she not get rewritten with the rest of the timeline? Why wasn't Brath rewritten with the rest of the timeline?

Why am I able to remember things that were erased from happening?

They tried to explain stuff to me, but I can't help but feel like something is really wrong.

I was just going to blindly follow Bree to wherever she took me, and look where I ended up.

The magic plane.

Who didn't stick around when a bunch of mages were brought in to try to figure out where I was?

Bree.

But why would Brath be working with her…?

It seems like he would have stayed.

Unless he thought something happened to me, maybe?

And who would have told him that?

I have to say that the longer I sit around with nothing to do but think, the more paranoid I get.

That's why I think I should maybe take up whittling. If I'm focused on that during the wee hours when the rest of the world sleeps, then maybe my mind won't wind conspiracy theories.

Since my brush in with that thing in my dream, I have started to feel a bit tired. It's not a sleepy sort of tired, though. It's just a weariness. Like I've been through too much, and it's finally catching up to me.

I'm kind of scared. I mean, what if all this magic is killing me? What if I'm not gonna be around long enough to see my goals accomplished? Can I leave it in Fizz's and Miloren's hands? Leave it to the princes to set things right? Would they feel the need to, considering Earth isn't their world?

Thinking of all that's happened, it doesn't even impact me as much as it used to. That feeling of absolute loneliness, of being the last of my world, is gone.

Maybe it's a mercy, but the guilt that's replaced it isn't much better, I don't think.

I almost think that I'm to the point where I might accept that the world can't be saved. That it's okay.

Which it isn't.

It's wrong, wrong, wrong.

But at the same time, it's so tiring to always be pushing forward, to always be fighting.

To be fighting a fight that isn't mine anymore.

I really need less time to think.

Or others who can stay up forever with me. I bet if Brath was here, he'd be able to assuage some of my fears. He'd have reasons that would make sense that wouldn't be so abysmal. He'd probably tell me that I was just in shock or something from what happened, that I hadn't really lost my connections to my world and that everything was going to be alright.

That I just had to hang on.

Granted, he'd probably sound a lot grumpier and condescending and stuff, but the sentiment would be there. It would be something I could hang on to.

I need to find him.

He's never let me down. Not once.

But finding him means finding Bree.

Bree, who the mere thought of conjures conspiracies that span worlds and time itself. I mean, is that even really her name? And saving my world? Is that a real thing? Or was she using me to some end?

I can't help but feel that… that something's really off.

And I still don't get why _I'm_ so important to setting things right. 'Right'.

I don't even know if that's what this journey has actually been about. What if my world really was meant to fall? What if…

No.

Ugh.

I hate thinking this way.

This last night has been miserable in particular. My thoughts were just spiraling out of control and…

"Ya still breathe, at least."

I jumped when a voice interrupted my thoughts. Turning to the bed next to the one I was sprawled out on, I saw Fizz sitting up. He tugged at his robes a little awkwardly, and I had the strangest fear that he could somehow read my mind.

In reality, I think he could just see me grimacing at the thoughts badgering me.

He slipped off his bed and wandered over to mine, sitting on the edge as I sat up and shifted around to give him room, gaze cast down, occasionally flicking up to look at me and then back to the cold stone floor. Not much sense in having anything fancy out in a desert, I guess. Or maybe goblins just prefer a more minimalistic approach.

"If I'd had any idea ya'd get stuck, I never woulda sent ya through. I mean, I shoved ya right in because I was so sure I was some genius caster…" His shoulders slumped as he settled in beside me.

"You are, though," I said, reaching out and patting his hand. In the time we'd had to play catch up, we hadn't really had a chance to talk, just the two of us. "In my timeline, you were the one who figured out the language spell that all of Earth uses to communicate, now. I think linguists might hate you, but that was pretty much it. You did so much."

"So the other me was pretty impressive," he muttered.

"You still made the communication spell in this timeline, too," I pointed out.

He frowned, looking up at me and shaking his head. "Yeah, well…" He shrugged. "Don't see how it's gonna do me much good in a timeline where ya world ain't a part of it."

"You could always sell it to the Horde and Alliance so that they could use it to spy on each other more easily," I offered, without really thinking.

He perked up a little, pointing at me. "That's a good idea. Ya never struck me as an entrepreneur, but ya ain't half bad."

"I learned from the best," I said, patting his shoulder.

He frowned at that. "We may be interchangeable to ya, but if there's a me in the other timeline, it ain't the same." He patted my hand. "I do appreciate that ya think so highly of me."

"The Other Fizz was a friend for sure, is a friend," I added, not wanting to think that my timeline might be gone forever, "but you're the one who sent me letter after letter about tips for shopping and buying low and all that. So I wasn't talking about him."

Fizz nodded slowly. "Alright. I guess other me was a bit more altruistic."

"Hard to say, unless you two were side by side, maybe." I shrugged. "Maybe you just have a good heart, no matter what timeline?"

"Evil me in some other, undiscovered universe or whatever is sneezin' right now," Fizz warned, though his lips cracked into a wide grin for an instant. It was gone quickly. "I'm really sorry, though. About the portal. I can't figure out how it went wrong."

"I already told you it was sabotage. I don't think it would have mattered who cast the portal," I said, trying to make him feel better.

After all _, Bree_ had been adamant that we take a portal.

That did make me wonder. If we hadn't gone to Fizz, then who could say who would have been sending us across the ocean? Had Bree had a specific mage in mind?

If that had been the case, wouldn't she have been wary of letting Fizz send us over?

Unless she knew that no matter who cast the spell, the outcome would be the same.

Assuming, of course, that I'm not just spinning crazy theories because I'm so sleep deprived.

"Did you show Bree the spell or anything?" I asked, narrowing my eyes as I tried to think if she'd ever talked about magic. She was a rogue, but… that didn't mean she couldn't research the arcane, right?

"Nah, didn't think a rogue could offer anythin' useful." Fizz shook his head, then paused, appraising me. "No offense."

"Oh, everyone always kicks rogues," I shrugged. "I'm used to it."

He smirked. Again, any amusement or relief was short-lived. "Ya think she's involved somehow?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "I think that whatever's going on is… it doesn't make sense. At all."

Even though I felt it would be better to keep my worries to myself, to not come off as completely crazy, the second he offered to listen, I explained it all to him, all my doubts, all my musings, the way Bree had been so adamant that we had to save everything.

"But she never said what _she_ got out of savin' ya world?" Fizz asked.

I blinked. "Well, no. But is that really that weird?"

"If someone's willin' to bend time to this extent, willin' to cross timelines to save ya and help ya, ya'd think they'd have a damned good reason to wanna help."

I hadn't considered that. Even as I mulled it over, Fizz got up and began pacing quietly between our beds. He looked so worn out—no doubt casting so many portals and running around trying to find me over the past few days had taken its toll on him—but he seemed driven, like solving this mystery would make up for me getting lost.

"Can ya think of anyone from any world that would want to help ya this much?"

"Brath," I said, point blank. He might have sociopathic tendencies and more than a few issues, but he'd come through for me, no matter what. "Any of the people from my world, but… if she'd been from my world, she'd have presented herself as another survivor, wouldn't she?"

"That would've made more sense," Fizz said, nodding.

"But she did have a working knowledge of what I'd done in my world, though not necessarily personal details. So she had to have interacted with my world to have known those details—" My eyes widened. "What if she's with the Legion?"

"Ya think the Burning Legion flung ya into another timeline, then sent someone to restore ya memories, then get ya stuck in the magical plane by sayin' that they were gonna help ya fix everythin'?" Fizz arched an eyebrow. "It's diabolical and twisted, sure, but wouldn't killin' ya be easier? The Legion _does_ learn from its mistakes, and if they think ya important enough to fling through time, I don't think they'd… I dunno. That just doesn't sit right." He shook his head, his ears flopping a little from the motion. "And I don't think the Legion has access to time stuff. Otherwise, wouldn't they just merge with the Legions in other timelines and become some truly unstoppable force?"

"What if I'm an experiment to help them figure out how to do that?" I asked, hunching forward, slightly terrified by the prospect.

"Or it could be the infinite flight."

Fizz and I both jumped, turning to see Prince Wrathion leaning on the foot of my bed. So much for people getting some sleep.

How bad of a rogue am I that literally everyone can sneak up on me? Mage goblin, toddler dragon/teenage boy.

I half expected Miloren to be sitting up, listening in on our debate, but when I looked at her, she was passed out, face down on her bed, ears sticking up into the air like mini monoliths. After all the riding we'd done the last few days, it wasn't much of a surprise that she'd passed out like she had.

She and Prince Anduin were both snoring softly.

"The infinite flight is the most guarded of the bronze flight's secrets," Prince Wrathion continued.

The magic in my head didn't have any whispers or background on an infinite flight. Perhaps that was just because they were related to time and not magic. "What are they?"

"Many of us, dragons, have heard rumors, and most of those who do don't really understand them more than to say that the bronze flight had some members that fell to the old gods' whispers. Beyond that, there's not much comprehension." He tugged on his cufflinks, adjusting them before continuing. "I would be lying if I said I understood it fully, myself. But imagine: creatures with the ability to move through and shape time, their wills bent toward chaos and destruction. Perhaps without your world, this one falls."

I frowned. "Wouldn't that kill them, too, though?"

"Yes, but you must remember, they are quite mad, as my flight once was." Prince Wrathion shrugged. "The old gods wish for the complete and utter destruction of Azeroth, and that is what their minions will give them, should they win."

"But then why all the elaborate nonsense with telling me I was helping? Fizz has a point. If anyone wants me out of the way, wouldn't it make more sense to just kill me? And why am _I_ the important one? I mean, I saved my world through dumb luck. There were military generals and political leaders and all kinds of stuff. It seems like…" I scowled at the ground. "It seems like we're missing something important."

"Perhaps we are looking at this wrong," Prince Wrathion offered.

"Ya mentioned the aspects were worried about anomalies. Does that sound like the infinite flight or something else?"

That put a damper on the prince's theory.

After thinking it over a moment, I finally just shook my head. "Maybe I should try to sleep again. If I could talk to that thing again, maybe we'd be able to figure out what it is."

"I thought ya couldn't sleep," Fizz mumbled.

"Well, last time, I was knocked out."

The other two eyed me. Fizz was the one to speak, though. "So…what. Ya wanna bang ya head around until ya pass out?"

"Maybe not that, but… there have to be ways to fall asleep. It'd be better than wondering whether we're up against the Legion or infinite dragons or whatever else might be out there, isn't it?"

Fizz held up his hands, frown firmly in place. "Ya know what? Let's…let's save this conversation until morning. Miloren mentioned some friend was on the way? Maybe we could wait for him, see if he has any idea about what to do."

I didn't like the thought of waiting, but Fizz was quite insistent I not go knocking myself out unless there were alert people around ready to snap me awake with a spell or something, to make sure nothing happened to me while I was dreaming.

He and Prince Wrathion said something about an Emerald Nightmare, but again, it meant little to me.

It wasn't part of my aspect.

…

I have an aspect.

When Fizz was sure that I wasn't going to go be a hero—knocking myself out didn't seem particularly heroic anyway, and I was fairly certain that the druids in Silithus had mentioned some sort of tea they could make that made them fall asleep—he finally laid back down. The second he hit the sheets, he was unconscious.

I envied him a little.

"Speaking of sleep, you said you haven't needed any? But you _were_ unconscious. How long ago was that?" Prince Wrathion asked, still at the foot of my bed.

"It's been a little over a week, I think," I shrugged.

"And not even a yawn," Prince Wrathion murmured. "You're outlasting me."

"That's probably bad, isn't it?" I whispered.

"It could be," Prince Wrathion shrugged. "I'm afraid it's not my area of expertise."

"You're like Brath," I murmured, without thinking, "if you want to press gems, it's a snap. But time and magic and life and dreams, that's beyond you."

He seemed to pause a second, gaze narrowing. It abruptly occurred to me that I'd never told him about Brath. He wouldn't make the connection, would he? Rather than inquire about who I was talking about, though, he simply smiled. "So it is," he replied, voice mildly amused. "What's truly odd is the lack of physical changes you've undergone."

"The lack?"

"Magic has a profound effect on those who draw too close."

"Miloren said if it'd been fel, I would have grown horns or something," I offered.

"Exactly," Prince Wrathion nodded. "But to have been so close to normal magic, for so long… Most mages are not that entrenched with magic, even if they use it their entire lives." He paused, shrugging, "Most dragons outside the blue flight aren't."

"Maybe my resistance to magic is why I wasn't affected physically?" I offered.

"Or maybe it's why the physical effect isn't something noticeable to the eye," Prince Wrathion murmured. "Maybe that's why you didn't grow claws or horns or a tail." When my laugh was a little nervous, he tilted his head. "The magic at least feels like it run deep in you. I don't think you'll ever get it all the way out." He considered it a second and then tilted his head. "But maybe you can expend it? Have you tried casting anything?"

"I'm a rogue."

"You _were_ a rogue," he replied, eerie eyes watching me carefully. "I think you should try it, anyway." When I didn't reply, he motioned toward me, straightening up, an unreadable look on his face. "Perhaps the magic is just wrapped tightly around you. If you use it, and it runs out, you might be able to return to being just you. In the very least, it might wear you out and get you sleeping like a normal living creature again."

I stared at him, a little unnerved by the idea of just running around blindly—though his idea was on par with my 'knock me out' plan. But still. I mean, what if I messed up a spell or…

There were so many ways this could go wrong, but I could see the spells in my head, as though they were written in the air in front of me.

I've never really wanted to use magic, either, you know? Like, some people are hardcore into fantasy and being able to chuck fireballs at their enemies, but me? I'm good just sneaking away from them. Or putting something pointy in their back, if they're a demon.

More than that, though, I think trying to use magic would signify an end. Of what, I can't say, but…

Everything ends eventually, right?

And I wanted Brath there, to laugh at me when nothing happened and ask why I really thought I could use magic, because of course I can't.

But he wasn't here, and I felt… lost.

Finally, I just shrugged at Prince Wrathion. "Not to disappoint, but I don't think I'm up for that, just yet."

He gave me a curt nod, then glanced around. "I suppose I should rest as well."

I have to say, I wasn't alone for more than a few minutes before I couldn't handle the twists and turns of my thoughts. Talking to them had helped while it was going on, but once I was alone with even more possible conspiracies and enemies, it was just too much.

I didn't want to deal with them, and idly looking over the errant facts in my head about different places was too… dull. It wasn't distracting enough.

My mind kept wandering back to magic.

Finally, after getting up and wandering through the quiet streets for a little while, I decided that it couldn't hurt. I slipped behind one of the buildings, paused to see if anyone could see me from the roads, and took in a deep breath.

I thought to the spells.

Then, finally, taking in a deep breath, I held my hand out in front of me, palm up, thinking of the least destructive thing I could think of: shadow.

"Amy?"

Turning my head, I froze when I saw Bree standing beside me, glowing eyes wide.


	29. Time, Time, Time

When I saw Bree for the first time since my dip in the leyline, I could feel how she didn't belong to this world. I could feel the…dissonance she created just by being.

She's a piece that doesn't belong, and the whole world knows it. I know it. I can feel it.

I wonder if I used to feel that way. Was that why Brath came over to me all those years ago? And if that was the reason, why didn't more dragons and whatnot come over to sniff me? I mean, it's not very subtle.

At all.

For all intents and purposes, she could have been glowing with a giant neon sign over her pointing and saying, "Otherworlder."

She didn't, of course, but it felt like she should have.

More than that, though, as I stared at her, with that amiable smile plastered to her face, something else dawned on me.

Bree wasn't forsaken.

When I'd met her I'd had—admittedly—little interaction with the forsaken, the major time being when I stumbled across the group helping V. I've very rarely interacted with them, and it had never occurred to me that Bree might be…pretending.

She wasn't a rotting corpse, though. Her skin was gaunt and withered, her eyes were empty, but she…

She was alive.

"Amy, I was beginning to think you wouldn't turn back up!" She said, her voice rasping with a surprising amount of cheer around it. "Come on. Brath's been scouting the Caverns, and we think we have a way in to the timeline we need to get to."

I didn't move toward her. My hand was still outstretched from when I'd been ready to try to cast a spell. "Why?"

It was all I could think to say. My mind was, for the first time, actually overwhelmed by what this magic sense was pushing through my head.

Bree tilted her head, a bit too sharply for a human's. What was she? "Hmm?"

I had so many 'why's bouncing around in my head. Why me? Why are you trying to save _my_ world? What's in it for you?

So many questions.

Instead, I heard myself saying, "Why are we sneaking in? Wouldn't it be better to speak with the bronze flight?"

Bree swung her arms slowly and then crossed them. "Well, we'll be meeting someone inside, but we really don't want to draw too much attention to this. I mean, think. If we're fixing time, this time will be unwritten. All we need is one bronze drake to not like that, and we'll have trouble."

"If this time is meant to be rewritten, Nozdormu won't let any of his subordinates stop us. If it's not meant to be, then we…"

_Shouldn't do it_.

It felt so cold to say that I couldn't.

To think that my entire world was _meant_ to end. How could that be the way things were meant to play out?

But still…

"You've spoken with the Nothing, haven't you?" Bree asked, straightening up a little and rocking from her toes to her heels and back. "You must have. You wouldn't be thinking about letting an entire world die unless they'd done something."

"What the hell are you even talking about?"

Bree didn't respond at first, lips twisting to one side as she appraised me. "The Nothing. Creatures that can find you in dreams and the in between. Some here call it the void." She took a few slow steps toward me, arms still crossed as she shrugged her shoulders. "Look, there's two ways this can happen. My way—which, I think you'd favor, really—or theirs. Keep in mind their way was killing you off before you even made it to Azeroth."

I stared at her, unmoving. I don't think I even dared blink.

I'd been ready for all sorts of craziness and tall tales and…treachery.

But not for her to tell me I died.

"It wasn't fair, so I came in and fixed it. Sort of." She paused, slouching a little. "See, you humans see time as really, really rigid. You think it moves in one direction, marching forward. The truth is, that's just how _you_ move through it. A lot of us don't." She tilted her head, watching for my reaction. "The stories say you're pretty good with accepting 'weird' stuff, but… I haven't really seen that with humans. Not to stereotype or anything." She considered something. "Though…with you taking a nap in the magic plane, your propensity for the complicated might have expanded somewhat."

I took a few steps toward her. "You've been using me to some end. In the beginning, I was too stupid to figure it out, but not anymore. You're the reason I got caught in the magic plane."

"Guilty."

I hadn't expected her to just admit to that, so again, I was a bit taken aback. I mean… if she was willing to hide this stuff, wouldn't it make more sense that she would fight harder to keep it a secret?

She seemed to read my mind. "You're stubborn Amy, and I need you. Before, I didn't think you could handle the truth, but now… now you're more than you were. You're all magic-y. And if spending a few minutes explaining things gets you back on my side, I can spare them."

Shaking my head, I pointed at her, again saying that single word that kept echoing through my head with a million different follow ups. "Why? Why toss me in the magic plane?"

"Because you would've faded if I hadn't." Bree glanced around us and then walked over to the wall that went around the entire goblin town and leaned against it. "Okay, so. You see time as some, like I said, rigid thing. A decision here," she poked at the air, and a single bronze light lit up between us, "leads to all kinds of things. It branches out and shapes reality in ways we expect and ways we could never even imagine. And most of time, we don't see all repercussions." The light moved up before splitting. Those two lines split again and again and again, until it looked like some weird tree hanging in the air, stretching out in all kinds of directions, like a 3D projection.

Bree brought her hand up again, finger tapping against the initial line. "Humans seem to think—and I could be wrong about you all, I guess—that when you change the past, it all goes away and something new is made." She slashed her finger through the first line, and as it fell the rest of it just disappeared and then a new tree rebuilt itself. "But that's not really how time comes undone. There's so much of it."

The tree reformed into its original shape. She cut through that first line again. It was as though something was devouring the little lines that had branched up and out. Some paths went out quickly, others lingered, some fell away and crashed into other paths like leaves or branches falling in a storm.

"Rewriting time causes a lot of chaos, and that's because it doesn't just go away. It falls apart in pieces. The Nothing went back to the first point where they could physically get to you, when you were traveling from your world to Azeroth, and they killed you. The second they did that, your time began to unwind from there, but again it's not instantaneous."

"You're telling me I'm dead," I whispered.

"Yes? No? You're looking at things chronologically?" She bit her lip, looking a little disappointed in me. I was surprised by how much that stung, but didn't say anything. "If nothing else had been done, the rewrite would have eventually overwritten your entire timeline, and you would have ceased to be. Time would accept that you died when you did, and it would have eventually forgotten that you'd ever done all that you'd done. You know, I think it'd help if you thought of time as sentient, because it sort of is."

She shrugged it off like we were talking about accidentally tapping someone's car in a parking lot. "However, this is where it gets a little tricky, so if you're already confused, let me know?"

I hesitated. "Time breaks down slowly, and if something happens in the past there's a limited window to correct it?"

"Uh, yeah. That's pretty much what I was saying. You're actually getting a little ahead, which is good," Bree nodded, that earlier excitement back. Her moods seemed to change quicker than I'd remembered. "So. You change the past, and things start being unmade. You can't really put a time frame on that because it's time. But. If you let all of it be unmade, then time forgets it was ever like that. Think of… if you learn yoga and then stop with it really abruptly. A year down the line, you might try a pose and realize you can still do it. If you pick at it, it comes back. But if you never touch it again, or just wait like thirty years, then it's gone. There might be some really faint echo, or the knowledge that it was there once, but you can't get it back."

I held up a hand. "Is that why Brath started hearing voices again? Because parts of time had been rewritten."

"Oh, no. No, no, no. Interesting jump, but no." Bree rolled her eyes. "That was the Nothing's first attempt to fix things. It didn't work. Killing you was their second attempt."

"Why make Brath crazy? Why come after me?"

"Amy, either you can trust me that I know what I'm doing, and we can go, or you can let me explain everything. It doesn't take _that_ long."

"You will get to those points?"

"I promise." She held her hand up like a scout's honor salute. As she lowered it, she pointed to me. "So. Your timeline was falling apart. I came in, and I caught you before time could completely fall away. I brought you back to right about when you ceased to be. So, time was thinking you'd died and that you shouldn't exist anymore, but you did. Because of me. So it got a little confused, and that's bought us some time to piece things back together."

She pushed away from the wall and began pacing slowly. "See, I thought if I put you in place, you'd just go through based on generic memories and do what you were supposed to do. Humans are supposed to be creatures of habit, after all." Her shoulders slumped. "But things turned out differently. Sort of. It was enough that the Nothing was happy, but…it was just proving them right."

"And they need to be wrong?"

"The do!" She nodded fervently. "And you'll agree with me, when I get there."

"Can you hurry this up?"

"You have forever, Amy. Do a few extra minutes really matter that much?"

At that, I shifted, eyeing her. She couldn't literally mean…

"Not to blame you, since you didn't really have your memories anymore, but the extra time I bought us by bringing you back was sort of wasted while you sat in Stormwind, doing nothing."

I twitched. By nothing, she was referring to me lamenting my dead world.

She seemed to realize she'd hit a nerve and apologized quickly. "I just…it wasn't happening like it was supposed to. So I came and got you. I didn't really have a good pick of people who knew you by the time I came back, hence…this one." She shrugged, motioning to her form. "You probably figured out that I'm not really like this. I…I can explain that too, eventually. It's not really that important right now."

"I figured you weren't human."

"I'm not _anything_ you've ever heard of." Bree shrugged. "But, by looking familiar and getting you to remember, we've kept that timeline alive a little longer. But you were still fading. You might not have noticed it, Brath might not have, but you were. I needed to change you enough that you would…stay."

"So you dunked me in enough magic to…what?"

"To disconnect you from time." Bree stopped her pacing. "Time can't erase you if you're not a part of it anymore."

"That…" I took a few steps toward her. "If that's true, then wouldn't there be pieces of all worlds and all timelines that never go away."

"Yeah," Bree conceded. "Where I'm from, there's a rumor that that's where the Nothing come from. They're remnants from dead worlds, hence their crazy powers, like rewriting time. We don't know if that's actually true, though. We do know that that sort of stuff—the remnants—sometimes manifests in current timelines. People see them as ghosts, inexplicable lights, sightings of creatures that can't or shouldn't exist, or feelings of having done stuff before."

"Déjà vu is fragments of dead timelines?"

"Oh, you have a word for it! That's so cute!" Bree considered it. "Convenient, too." She nodded. "Déjà vu is dead timelines, yeah."

"So even if we fix this, there's a possibility that this will be rewritten again?"

"Not if we set up some guards. Well, you won't. _You're_ human."

I held up a hand. "Alright. So my timeline is falling apart. Why do you want to save it?"

At that, Bree fell silent.

She watched me for a really long time, unblinking—I suppose not having eyes helped with that.

Finally, she took in a slow breath. "If I can show that your world can be saved, and things will turn out okay, then that means the Nothing were wrong to condemn your whole world." She hesitated and then added, "And if they're wrong about your world, then they could be wrong about mine. They haven't acted on my world yet, but they're going to. They govern everything that exists. They cut off the bad pieces to protect the whole. A few worlds falling isn't as bad as every world falling."

"The Nothing condemn entire worlds."

"They are dead worlds, you know, according to legends. They remember how bad it was. So they sacrifice to keep it from being so horrible again." Bree grew so still. "But I think they're so used to sacrifice that they can't see that it's not always necessary. Sometimes there can be a happy ending."

She was… so much like me. She was crossing worlds, fighting insurmountable odds, just to save her world.

I thought back to Earth. "So…without Azeroth's help, Earth falls?"

"Eventually. You guys put up one hell of a fight, from what I hear, but in the end magic trumps nukes. And the Eredar have a _lot_ of magic."

"So the reason you needed me to fix things is because my timeline was the point that was severed to make my world fall."

"It's…" Bree scrunched her brow together, looking me over. "It's complicated."

"Did I not just follow your explanation of timelines and being rewritten and falling apart?"

"Yeah, but…" Bree crossed her arms again, drumming her fingers against her arm. "You're not gonna like the answer. It's so neutral as an explanation of time."

Rolling my eyes, I mirrored her stance. "I'm pretty sure I've proven that I can handle most anything."

At that, Bree tilted her head back and forth, hair swishing against one shoulder and then the other. "You _are_ very… Just. Listen, okay?" When I couldn't help but roll my eyes again, she sighed. "Your world wasn't what needed to end. It was more collateral damage."

"Collateral damage? Are you kidding me?" I snapped.

She held her hands up. "This is why I didn't want to tell you. Facts are one thing, but emotions are a nightmare…"

Even as she said that, I thought back to her explanations. Killing me had been the second attempt. The first one had been…

Bree winced as my gaze snapped back toward her and then she bowed her head, chewing slowly on her lip. "Your world wasn't the problem. Brath was."


	30. Brath

There was this impossibly long silence. I mean, I know the rest of the world had to keep going—like literally, I could feel the magic trekking on in the back of my head—but it seemed like everything just stopped.

Finally, I found my voice. "You're trying to tell me that all of this…everything that's been going on lately, has something to do with Brath?"

"No, it has _everything_ to do with him." At that, Bree sighed. "You…really won't want to hear this part."

To say I was suspicious was an understatement. However, I crossed my arms and then motioned to her with one hand. "Go on, then. I've followed everything else, haven't I?"

At first, I didn't think she would say anything more, like she thought that, despite following the concepts of time and all that, that somehow Brath would be my breaking point.

Finally, she just shrugged. "Well, I suppose it wouldn't…hurt to try. My timeline starts a long time after yours ends." Before I could fully process what she was saying, she kept going. "See, Brath…loves you. You're very, very, _very_ important to him. But you're…well, you _were_ mortal. Gone in a blink. And well," Bree shifted a little, tugging on her sleeve, a heavy frown in place. "He gets corrupted after you die. If you'd still been alive, it wouldn't have happened, but, again, mortality. You can only stave off death for so long." She was talking faster and faster, and she'd begun to pace as she spoke. "So, anyway, Brath gets corrupted by the Legion, and he corrupts his whole flight. The one you saved by bringing to your world. He kills the ones who won't help, and… You've never seen a dragon hopped up on fel blood, but I have. They're what are actually wiping out my world right now."

I had no words.

"But they're confined to my world, which means destroying my home destroys them and keeps them from spreading further. Assuming there aren't any hidden hatcheries left." Bree stopped at that, looking at me. "See, the Nothing already took out _those_ worlds. We're the last one with the worst of the worst." She tried to smile, but it looked pained and fell away quickly. "But it's so much loss, right? So we proposed stopping the fel dragons at their source which would mean a bunch of worlds could be saved, since, you know, they wouldn't have been unmade to stop the dragons."

"So you want to kill Brath."

She twisted her mouth to the side, appraising me. "See, this is the problem. You already look like you don't want to believe me. But, listen. The Nothing tried driving him crazy. They thought that the adventurers in your world would notice and put him down before you died, and then it'd be okay. But it turns out he's actually really good at hiding his crazy. Thanks for the practice, Old Gods." She winced at her own words. "But you're the only one who ever noticed, and you loved him too much to let anyone hurt him. So that plan didn't work. That's why they moved to plan B."

I felt light-headed. "Killing me."

Bree took in a deep breath and then let it out. "Yeah. The Nothing decided that if Brath never met you, he'd never have his flight evacuated to your world, and he'd probably be hunted down and killed like the rest of them. And even if he didn't, he wouldn't have you to have such a strong connection to, and he wouldn't get corrupted when you died because he wouldn't know or care."

She stopped there, watching me with an unreadable expression—granted, it was hard to tell most of her expressions without eyes there, but still.

I stared at her for a long time before finally pointing at her. "You mean that people decided to kill me and my entire world because they didn't want Brath to fall in love with me?"

"And that's not fair to you," Bree offered, holding her hand out to me. "That's why I came. I think your world can be saved, too. We'll prove that the Nothing aren't always right. Then they'll have to reevaluate the worlds they destroy. And, honestly, saving your world might make destroying mine completely irrelevant. We all win."

I wish I could say I couldn't follow what she'd said. I wish I could say little pieces slipped past me, and that that was why it took me so long to reply. It wasn't, though.

Because I knew, without her ever saying it, what she was getting at.

She still wanted to kill Brath.

"How do we _all_ win exactly?"

She frowned. "Really?"

"How does _everyone_ win?"

At that, she sighed. "You're letting your emotions get in the way. Just calm down and hear me out, alright?" She held up her hands even as I narrowed my eyes. "My plan means that _nobody_ has to die. Not even Brath. Because with my plan, _you_ live." She pointed at me for emphasis. "I have to confess that I had you dipped in magic for more reasons than to just disconnect you from time. Think about it. You're more magic than human now. Magic doesn't die. You'll live as long as Brath." She paused, tilting her head back and forth. "If not longer…"

Okay, so I _did_ miss part of her explanation. The most important part, apparently.

"You two love each other. And I've read up on you humans and your culture and history. You all love the concept of forever. I've seen it in so many of your books and movies. It's in your wedding vow things." She clapped her hands together. "You get to live the dream, Amy. Forever with the one you love."

I shook my head. "How does me being alive forever keep him from getting corrupted? Am I supposed to stop something? Is there some spell? Does he get captured or…what do I need to watch out for? And why do I have to live forever to do that?"

"Oh." Bree's head bent forward, one hand running up and down her opposite arm. "Yeah, I guess I do need to explain that better." When I motioned for her to keep going, she grew perfectly still for a second. "Okay. So. When I say corrupted, I mean… Well…you're essentially his world. His everything. So when you die, he loses everything." She began pacing again. "And he decides that if he can't have anything, no one else should be able to. So when you die, he joins the Legion. Willingly."

I fish-mouthed for a few minutes, unable to even begin to come up with a response to that.

Bree stopped again, frowning. "Honestly, it doesn't feel like a very healthy relationship from where I'm standing, but I understand there are cultural differences here." She held her hands up, as though she expected me to argue with her on the matter. "I've read your world's Twilight. It's…different. In my world that's a textbook abusive relationship, but if it makes you humans happy, who am I to judge?"

I felt my eye twitch. I thought back to how well Bree and Brath had gotten along, how I'd been jealous of that. It was one thing to know that all this time that friendliness had been an act. It was another thing to know that she found Brath comparable to Edward frikkin' Cullen.

I'm sorry, but...ew.

"First of all, Brath never decided what was best for our relationship without talking to me about it. He never abandoned me in the woods. He never took apart a car engine to keep me from my friends. He—"

"No. No, no, no, no. Whatever you say," Bree waved her hands in front of her. "I'm not here to start a fight. I'm here to help. Everybody wins, remember? No deaths. You get Brath. He gets you. We all live! …mostly because he doesn't willingly go on a murderous rampage, but still." She clapped a few times. "Yaaay…"

That yay did not sound particularly happy as she watched me for my reaction.

I just.

I'm supposed to just believe that Brath is some crazy murderer, and the only thing keeping him from following his murderous whims is me? That's…not romantic at all. That's horrifying.

And not true.

I mean, there's no way.

Maybe he makes a poor decision in grief that he can't turn back from or something. But he wouldn't…

He wouldn't destroy worlds just because I died. I mean, life goes on. I always knew he'd outlive me. There's no way he didn't know that, too. He's a dragon. They're smarter than people.

He couldn't actually…

There's no way.

At that moment, I knew I needed to talk to him. If I could just see him and tell him this ridiculous story, he'd definitely confirm that he wouldn't do that.

I mean… Yes, he's sadistic, and he doesn't like any of my friends, and he tends to approve when I make horrible life decisions, but he's not…

Oh my God, Brath's evil.

I can't even lie to myself.

I always knew he had evil tendencies, but that was because of the voices that used to be in his head, wasn't it? Or like emotional scarring or something?

And!

If what she's saying about the Nothing trying to drive Brath crazy was true, that means that him hoarding the letters from my friends and biting off Senta'ri's finger was probably their doing, not his. Because as much as he might have disliked my friends, he never tried to keep me from them before that.

"When did the Nothing try to make him crazy?"

"Um, out of everything I've told you, how is that the part that matters?"

"I remember him losing himself to the voices in his head. He was trying to keep me from going back to Azeroth because he thought he would fall back to the Old Gods if we did. He thought he could still hear them."

"I don't know all the details for that plan. You can ask the Nothing."

I frowned. "We're talking about the weird shadow thing that showed up in my dreams and told me I was a monster, aren't we?"

"Yeah, that sounds like them. I'm surprised they'd come after you here. They can't reach people in the physical worlds, so they normally have to come after them in in-betweens or non-physical states. That's why they killed you while you were traveling between worlds, by the way." She paused. "Unless something's about to happen here with the Legion again. That might have drawn their attention back to this world and thus to you." Bree shrugged. "I wonder…" Then, she shook her head. "It doesn't matter. We can use the Caverns of Time to talk to the Nothing. If you agree to be Brath's keeper, then they can undo killing you, which, with this much of your timeline still intact, will let it patch itself back together. Then we stick you back where I stole you from, and time goes on. You'll still have the side effects from being so close to magic in your system, and you and Brath can fight the Legion into eternity. …Or just retire to some quiet world. Maybe take turns with that."

That time she did sound cheerful, but to me…

She was right in being skeptical about telling me all this.

This part _was_ too much.

Time being rewritten was one thing.

People expecting me to keep someone from becoming a killer for literally ever was…

If Brath is really capable of that sort of thing, wouldn't he be prone to do it with or without me? After a long enough time, wouldn't he do it anyway?

Not that he would. I mean, he might be evilish, but he's not _that_ bad.

And honestly, he can be kind of lazy. The only reason I can ever get him to do anything like join in fights against the Legion and stuff is if I straight up tell him I'm gonna be involved in it whether he comes or not, so he comes along to make sure I don't die horribly.

So I can't see him putting in so much effort to destroy entire worlds. Even if he was grieving.

I mean, his dad died at the hands of a raid group, and he barely blinked.

He might do something stupid because he was bored—and when I say stupid I mean horrifyingly gruesome to someone he really doesn't like, like a demon or something—but that's still not the same as what Bree was talking about.

"You said Brath was at the Caverns, waiting for us?"

"Yes," Bree sounded so triumphant. "We really need to go. I think the Nothing wouldn't mind being wrong, but they don't trust that they are, and so they've set things into motion to make sure things play out the way they want them to."

I took a few steps toward her. "Things? What things?"

"I don't know everything, Amy." She shrugged her shoulders. "But I do know they are swift and relentless and sometimes vicious."

"I need to get Fizz and the others."

"I wouldn't suggest that," Bree argued, stopping in her tracks. "They won't be able to go with us to see the Nothing. We're pushing it by trying to get three people through to see them. Honestly, I doubt I'll even be able to get through. I'll have to hold the way open, and Brath might have to just wait with me. It's really hard to manipulate time. Harder the longer you have a physical form, too. I dunno how these bronze dragons even do it."

Even as it occurred to me that Bree wasn't naturally a physical entity, I motioned over my shoulder. "I should still tell them I'm going. Otherwise, they'll follow anyway. And who knows? Maybe Fizz can help you with the spell. He's brilliant."

Bree crossed her arms. "I guess it couldn't hurt." She drummed her fingers against her arms and then shook her head. "But they can't get in the way. If they seem like they might, we'll have to lose them in the timeways. And there's no guarantee that they'll come out of that alright, or even alive."

"If we can fix time, then they'll have never been in this situation, and they'll be okay anyway." Even as I said that, I thought about how Fizz had talked about his other incarnation. They weren't the same, but they were.

It felt low to choose one version over the other, to use this version to get the other one back.

But…

It's not like he's actually dying, right? Fizz will still be there, in my world, in my time's Azeroth.

As we started walking back toward the inn, I glanced at Bree. "The Brath who came with you is from my unmade timeline, right?"

"Yeah." She nodded as she plodded along beside me. "When time didn't go the way it was supposed to, I went and stole him so that he could help me figure things out. Of course, all he wanted to do was find you."

Now that sounded like Brath.


	31. On the Road Again

So. I must say that the last few days have been surprisingly dull. Bree and I woke up the rest of the crew the morning after our conversation. At first, I was all for waking them up right away and resuming the quest to save the world, but Bree reminded me that normal people still need their sleep, so instead we waited.

Once they were up and capable of following our conversation, we told them the bare minimum of what we needed to. We'd agreed that letting them in on the timelines getting rewritten part might not go over so well, so what we did was tell them that we wanted to use a spell to talk to the Nothing.

Miloren had seemed particularly interested in that, though her questions had gotten a bit sidelined as Bree explained her spell to Fizz to see if he could help her make it more stable.

By the way, at this point, I don't know if she's a mage or what? Also, I still haven't tried using magic myself, so for all I know, I could help cast the spell, too.

I haven't offered, though.

Something about that is still just too…

Think about the timing. I'm ready to try to cast a spell, and Bree shows up? It's like I'm not meant to use magic, even if I have it. Or maybe that's just my newfound paranoia chiming in. More on that later.

Anyway, once breakfast was had and supplies were gathered, we were ready to head out. Miloren really didn't want to go. She said her friend was still en route, and she didn't want him to get lost or something.

I guess he doesn't have a great sense of direction?

I don't know.

But the rest of us, Bree, Fizz, and the princes, all headed south into the desert. Tanaris is actually really pretty. Like, you might think that there's nothing but sand—and you'd be mostly right—but there's so much more…

Maybe it's the magic. There aren't any particularly strong leylines going through the area, but there's still lesser ones—leylines are sort of like this massive spiderweb that spans the whole world with some strands thicker and stronger than others. Maybe comparing it to a nervous system would be more accurate.

Anyway, it lends this whole new dimension to the world that I never saw before. Technically, I'm still not _seeing_ it, since it's more of a sixth sense, but…you get what I mean.

I wonder if Earth looks this pretty.

I'd been so in my head during my stay in Silithus and my passage through Un'goro, but I think they were prettier than I'd been used to, as well. It's just…kind of sparkly without there being visible sparkles? If that makes sense?

But anyway.

So I was in awe of nature in general.

Now, one thing I would like to mention is that when Prince Wrathion met Bree, he gave her the biggest frown. It was just for a second, but then he was all smiles and happy to meet her and weird. He sniffed her, too. Said he could feel that she wasn't from Azeroth.

I'd already talked her into forgoing the pretenses though, so it's not like that was really news to anyone.

It's taken us a bit longer than she would have liked to get to the Caverns because Fizz and Prince Anduin need to sleep. I still feel like it shouldn't matter too much, since time is apparently so flexible, but since she is the one who understands it better, I suppose I shouldn't really be questioning her concern.

It just…

It feels like we're getting close, you know? Like we're almost done with whatever this bizarre twist of fate has been.

I dunno how I feel about it, but…

Prince Wrathion has done his best to stay up at night with Bree and me. He's talked to her a bit about time. He followed her about as well as I did—which made me feel pretty smart to be keeping up with dragons—and he's been asking about her world. He's most sympathetic to people who've had to fight the Legion.

She's been a little reserved about talking about her world with any other others, though. And by a little, I mean a lot. When she was dodging things with Prince Wrathion, I just figured maybe it was because he was a black dragon, and she was scared he might react poorly to hearing his flight becomes crazy evil and all that—though to be fair, he's already lived through that once.

In case you were wondering, in this timeline he's _actually_ the last black dragon. All the others, even Zaercia and the few who weren't corrupted, were hunted down and slain, because I guess it was just a matter of time before the others fell to the corruption? Or it was in them, but dormant or something? I don't quite know. I kind of think Prince Wrathion just didn't have any hope and condemned everyone not realizing there was hope.

Not that I'm gonna tell _him_ that. How awful would it be to say he might not have needed to kill everyone, especially when I don't know all the details?

It kind of has me worried about what will happen when he meets Brath.

Especially considering that Brath goes evil in my timeline.

Well, if Bree's right he does, anyway.

I'm still kind of surprised she doesn't want to just kill Brath off. I mean, it seems like that would have been easier. I have a feeling that I'm missing something, still.

It never ends. There's always some little piece of the puzzle that's just out of reach that would make the whole image look different. It drives me crazy sometimes, but I don't think any one person can ever see the whole picture, either.

Maybe an aspect could. Or the Nothing.

A Nothing? How do you talk about them in singular? Is it the same? Bree made it sound like there were more than one, but…I really don't know anything about them.

Meh.

Though… if they can see the whole picture, and their solution was to kill me off, maybe I don't _want_ to see the whole picture.

I don't know. There's been a lot of time to think again, and I don't think humans were meant to have this much time. If my growing paranoia is any indication, we weren't.

At all.

But, like she said. We'll talk to the Nothing and see about getting things fixed. Maybe they'll have a solution where I can still sleep…

Sleep would probably do a lot for my paranoia.

I mean, I _never_ rest anymore. I don't _feel_ like I need it, but my mind is always active, and I really don't think it's supposed to be. Humans are supposed to have downtime to let the subconscious figure things out without the conscious part of our minds there to nitpick everything.

I dunno.

So. It really was a dull last few days, hence the time to fixate on how certain things make me paranoid, including the idea of becoming more paranoid. Miloren and her friend caught up to us this morning, which surprises me because I would have thought they'd need to sleep—how blissful it is to need to do that… If I can ever sleep normally again, I will not be taking it for granted.

Her friend is an elven mage, surprise, surprise. His name is Don'drenell, and he was fascinated by both me and Bree.

Bree caught his attention first, not that she liked it. In fact, when he tried to ask her questions about her world, she actually got pretty defensive. I was surprised, seeing how easily she'd opened up to me. It made me wonder if there was something about him that she didn't like. But then, she hadn't wanted to talk to Prince Wrathion, either.

I couldn't tell. He seemed nice enough—and normal enough—to me.

Though I do seem to be a terrible judge of character.

When she proved too unwilling to cooperate, Don'drenell turned his sights on me. We haven't had a lot of time to talk, what with the elves having only caught up to us a few hours ago—in case you were wondering, we're sort of sharing mounts. The princes are riding together on a steed, I'm with Fizz on his worg—which I think might want to eat me—and the elves are together on Miloren's mount. Bree had her own horse, surprisingly enough. I don't know what happened to her dragon, but I think she would have preferred if we'd been flying.

Of course we couldn't get flying mounts for everyone, so it's going a little slower.

We've been able to see the beginnings of the Caverns of Time looming up from the sands in the distance all day, but they don't seem to be getting any closer. Gotta love that lack of depth perception in deserts.

When we stopped around noon to shelter from the hottest part of the day under some rocks, Bree said she was gonna go on ahead and check on how things were progressing at the Caverns' end. We had told them that we had someone at the Caverns, but hadn't exactly explained who.

While I don't really think it was necessary for her to leave like she did, I think she just didn't want to deal with Don'drenell.

However, it meant that I got to be the subject of his curiosity.

"And your world doesn't feel like it's yours anymore?" he was asking. He had me by one of my wrists, feeling my pulse and checking magic things as well. His skin was such a dark blue that it almost looked grayish black. His skin contrasted nicely with his white hair. And I mean stark white.

"No."

"Not even a sliver?" He peered up at me, those glowing eyes searching mine for some hint of doubt. When I shook my head, he frowned. "I can feel little pieces of dissonance in you, remnants from your other world, no doubt, but it's so faint… I wish I could have seen you when you first left the magic plane." He sighed, letting go of me. "I could have noted if the dissonance is growing or dwindling."

Fizz's ears perked at that. "Ya think the magic's still…changin' her? Even now?"

"I wouldn't be surprised."

Miloren scoffed, obviously hating the idea. Her ears were a bit lower than usual as sweat beaded on her skin, and she watched the dunes beyond us shimmer under the sweltering heat.

I wasn't that hot, though I could tell that it was hot. I think that's another side effect of my magic bath.

As the two mages moved to the side to discuss theories—some of which I could dismiss before they even finished proposing them, though I didn't interrupt their conversation—Prince Anduin moved over to sit beside me. Of our little traveling party, he seemed to be faring the worst. Prince Wrathion looked like he could sit in literal fire and still be cool.

Considering he's a dragon, he probably could.

"You don't seem very worried about your predicament."

I eyed the teenager beside me. "Well, whatever's happening to me, there's still a world to save."

"You and Bree have been a little vague about how you intend to save your world."

Ah, yes. Because neither of us thought telling the people here that rewriting time might change their lives, too. I just don't want to think of it, you know? I mean, that's some pretty heavy responsibility, deciding if some lives are more important than others.

And it may not even be my call.

For all I know, when we find these Nothing guys, they'll just kill me off then and there.

Shit.

I hadn't thought of that.

Well, I mean… I don't really see any other options.

Go to the aspects maybe?

But then, Bree seems to have faith in the Nothing, and she's been through about as much as I have, so it seems like the least I could do is give her idea a chance.

That's not crazy, right?

I mean…

Well, if it comes down to my world or hers, she'll choose hers, just like I'd choose mine. It sounds terrible, but… we always pick the people we know, don't we? The ones whose faces will haunt us, if we don't save them?

I really don't like thinking about this.

When I realized that Prince Anduin was still waiting for a response, I shrugged. "Well, we have to talk to the Nothing. I think they might be the creatures upsetting the aspects. If we can reason with them, then everyone goes home happy? At least, according to Bree."

My explanation wasn't much, but it was enough to catch both Miloren and Don'drenell's attention. Both of them moved closer to me, asking at the same time what I knew about this mysterious Nothing.

So I explained what I could. It was actually pretty easy to talk about how they unmade worlds and stuff without expressing how this timeline might get unmade.

However, I didn't consider a logical jump that the others might make.

"Do you think the Nothing intend to unmake Azeroth?" Prince Wrathion asked.

I turned slowly to stare at him. "What?"

"If Bree thinks they have returned their attention to our world, do you think it is with the intent to destroy it?"

Miloren shrugged. "Perhaps they are just here to see how the Legion will affect Azeroth."

Don'drenell nodded. "We _have_ successfully fended off the Legion multiple times, now."

"Or perhaps they think we are growing weak," Prince Anduin whispered.

I swallowed, not sure how to comfort the two boys. Fizz was quiet, like he didn't know what to think. "I can ask them. When I talk to them."

"How exactly do you plan to make contact?" Miloren asked. "Last I heard, we were discussing knocking you out to get you into the dream realm again."

"Bree has a spell, remember? Hence the travel to the Caverns. Going to where time is weakest or the least chronological or…whatever will enable us to get to them the easiest."

Miloren merely frowned at that.

"But if she's working against them…" Don'drenell paused and then shrugged. "It is ambitious that she would want to prove these creatures wrong."

"If that's what she's really trying to do," Miloren mused. "I… do not know that I trust this creature. We don't even know what she is. What world is she from?"

I paused as I realized Bree had never told me those things. She'd said her world was in peril, and dragons were destroying it, but nothing else. I didn't even know what her species was called. I paused. I'd left out the part about the black dragon flight being what was destroying her world.

I didn't want Prince Wrathion getting upset, or anyone jumping the gun and deciding it was time to kill off Brath when we catch up to him.

Which reminded me.

Glancing at Prince Wrathion, I considered what Brath had said, about not wanting anyone to know he was around. He'd been so paranoid.

A level of paranoia that I could appreciate now.

But…

It was better to let the black prince know _before_ he met his older brother, right? No need to have him trying to take out the last of his flight if it wasn't necessary.

Standing up, I motioned toward Prince Wrathion. "Before we go any further, I need to talk with you about something."

He quirked a brow, that eerie gaze appraising me with new interest. "Whatever about?"

"I… think you're gonna want to hear this in private."


	32. Dragons and Their Feelings

Did you know dragon's breath is hot enough to melt sand into glass?

Well, it totally is.

By the time I'd finished explaining about Brath and everything, there was more than a bit of glass around me. Though, to be fair, Prince Wrathion was a lot calmer than I'd worried he would be. Maybe it's just because he's not a grown dragon.

And to be clear, he wasn't really mad at _me_.

He was mad at the squandered possibilities. He was mad that in another time his flight didn't have to be hunted down to nigh extinction. He was mad that there was another path, one that didn't leave him so completely alone.

He's figured out the timeline thing, too. See, while we had explained how time was falling apart, we hadn't exactly told him that his timeline's existence was sort of in conflict with the one we wanted to exist.

Again, though, dragons are so smart.

Honestly, I thought that was all there was there, until we camped for the night, later on. I still don't need to sleep, so I've started keeping watch the whole time, since there's no reason for everyone to be up. Miloren and Don'drenell stayed up for a bit anyway, since they are nocturnal and all.

But they've been active during the days long enough that they can sleep fairly well at night, and they did drift off so that they'd be rested for the continuation of our trip.

Bree hadn't gotten back yet—it was like she was avoiding us, which had me worried—and so I'd figured I'd probably be up alone, with my constant worrying to keep me company.

Because I'm not paranoid enough yet, so let's keep this pace going until I go crazy. With my luck, that won't be too long.

However, I forgot that dragons don't need quite so much sleep. I mean, Prince Wrathion sleeps a lot more than Brath ever did—he _is_ a baby dragon—but he's still up quite often.

So I was idly thinking about magic and spells and a bunch of stuff I'm trying not to think about when I realized I'm not the only one up.

Prince Wrathion was sitting on his bedroll, watching Prince Anduin sleep. Part of me thought it was cute, part of me thought it was creepy, part of me just wanted to mind my own damn business.

Which I did.

For all of, I don't know, ten minutes?

Then Prince Wrathion got up and came over to sit next to me. We had a fire going—of course, since deserts are ridiculously cold at night—and he sat there beside me, though he was either staring at the flames which reflected in his red eyes, or he was still watching his fellow prince.

"Do I know him?"

At that, I kind of snapped out of my thoughts and eyed him. "Huh?"

"Anduin. Do I know him? In your timeline."

I glanced across the way at the sleeping prince. He was definitely having the worst of it with our travels, but he hadn't complained once.

He's still a brat for siccing an army on me, though.

"Honestly, I don't really know." I shrugged, looking back at Prince Wrathion. "We aren't exactly close in my timeline. You're just…" My boyfriend's brother sounded kind of cold to say.

We sat there for a moment in awkward silence, neither of us really sure what to say after that. Finally, he spoke up again, adjusting one of his cufflinks. "If my flight was saved, did I have a consort?"

"Ah, yeah. Zaercia." I thought back to my even less frequent meetings with the other dragon. I scratched at the back of my neck. "She's nice. And I guess you guys were going to get married or whatever when you got a bit older."

"I prioritized the restoration of my flight because I could," he whispered.

He sounded so somber. I leaned forward a little, peering over at him. "You seemed like you really liked her." He gave me this really annoyed look. You know, the one that teenage boys give old people when they try to give them romantic advice—I'm like 20…that's not old. But anyway, he gave me that look, so I kind of shrugged. "You were excited the one time I talked to you about it."

That didn't help.

He just sort of rolled his eyes. Which, I guess made sense. I mean, I wasn't exactly helping.

Finally, I motioned toward Prince Anduin. "You might have known him. You weren't in my world a lot. There was some issue with the pandaren that required attention. A lot of people left my world to come back to Azeroth."

At that, he perked up. "Really?" He shifted a little closer. "Do you know any details?"

"Not much." I tried to think back. It was like trying to remember information from a world that wasn't my world from memories of a world that was no longer my world.

So in other words, really hard.

However, after sitting there, picking at it for a little while, I finally said, "Well, the Horde and Alliance were getting along after coming to help Earth, but the leader of the orcs didn't trust that the Earth humans would stay neutral, and he started drawing forces out. Then the Alliance started pulling back because they thought that the Horde would attack them and try to force them to live on Earth or something? It was weird. I didn't keep up with it because I was busy fighting demons."

"Ah," he replied, seeming to lose interest.

"But, the next thing I knew, there were pandaren in my world. They talked about a war a few times. We had a few skirmishes in some of the quest hubs on Earth. I know that they stopped Garrosh from doing something horrible and then he went back in time."

Prince Wrathion perked up again. "That…you are certain that was your timeline? That you are not remembering things as they happen now?"

"I'm sure."

He smiled faintly. "I knew him, then."

"You really like him, huh?"

The prince eyed me, but said nothing.

That was all he really said on the matter, but I could tell it made him feel immensely better about something. Helping me, maybe? I mean, if he was thinking the way I was, then only one timeline will exist in the end, and if I get my way, I think he was worried he'd never fall in love or something.

Which is so sad and adorable, and I can almost forgive them for the army.

It took us another two days to get to the Caverns. There wasn't a lot of stuff happening. Don'drenell is pretty cool. He's kind of quiet and really observant. Most of the time, he's talking with Fizz, though, about spells. I've chipped in a bit, too, since I am a literal font of information about magic for now, and possibly ever.

When we reached the caves, Bree stopped us before we could head for the main entrance, saying that she and Brath had a back way in. I was happy because I really wanted to talk to Brath about the things she'd told me. I still can't see him as a destroyer of worlds.

I mean, yeah, I guess his dad did pretty much go that route, but still. Brath's not his dad.

So yeah. I was thinking about Brath and not really paying as much attention as I should have been, because really, with all the stuff in my head, I should have picked up on something sooner. In a way, I did, it's just I ignored it.

See, Bree led us to this little cavern and…

Let me back up and say that a lot of weapons in Azeroth are enchanted, and enchantment is magic. What am I an automatic detector of?

Magic.

So what should I have noticed pretty quickly?

When there was extra in the near vicinity.

But again, my mind was on other things.

It wasn't until I saw Brath for the first time in weeks that I realized something was wrong. And right as I was realizing that, Nicholas came out of stealth.

See, in this timeline, he didn't lose those daggers that Prince Wrathion gave him. In this timeline, Nicholas _had_ used them to kill every black dragon except for the black prince himself.

In my defense, it's basically Prince Wrathion's magic, so it's more that I should have realized that it was coming from multiple points than just him, but…

I am such a magic nerd.

And I should probably get back to the whole Nicholas sneaking up to kill Brath thing.

Spoiler, he lives.

It was pretty close, though.

And like a nightmare.

Brath had finally given up his drake form—which was such a relief—and he'd been leaning against the rock face as we came up. When he saw me, his brow scrunched together, and he straightened up, inspecting me with a most critical eye.

Then, even as I was offering him a small wave, Nicholas shadowstepped up behind him.

Everything seemed to slow down.

I started forward, reaching for my own daggers. Prince Wrathion yelled for Nicholas to stop. He was already mid swing though. Even with my daggers, I wasn't going to get to them in time.

I panicked.

All I could think was that something had to stop the blade. Something had to intercept it.

And something did.

Priests call it a shield.

For a second I thought I had done it, not gonna lie. Then it occurred to me that I was traveling with an actual priest.

Sure enough, Prince Anduin was the one who'd shielded Brath, not me. Magic requires a little more thought than just, "Oh shit."

However, the shield may have stopped Nicholas from hurting Brath, but it hardly stopped me. I was already mid-dive when it happened, and so I tackled Nicholas to the ground even as he backed off.

Kinda of proud of that, considering he's supposed to be the best rogue and all, and he couldn't dodge _me_.

But he was the one pinning me by the time we hit the ground, so my triumph was short-lived.

So was his.

Brath swept him off me with a sweep of his tail. He shifted back to dragon form just to do that. Then he was back in his human form, leaning down and hoisting me up by my shoulders, golden gaze narrowed as he looked me over like he fully expected me to, well, not be me.

He started to lean toward me, and I couldn't help a scowl. "So help me, but if you sniff me, I will—"

I didn't get to finish my threat because it turns out he wasn't leaning in to rely on his draconic senses to assess me.

Instead, he was leaning in for a kiss.


	33. Pick a Side

So there's a lot of things to catch up on. It's like the universe didn't like having a week of semi-downtime and decided to make everything move extra fast to make up for it.

First thing, I'm pretty sure we traumatized Prince Wrathion. No one wants to see their older brother make out with someone. I remember this one time Greg had his girlfriend over and just…ugh. Did not need to see her tongue going down his throat.

Turns out that’s sort of a universal feeling when it comes to siblings. Dragons included. He pretty much can't look at either of us right now without his cheeks turning about the same red as his eyes. Prince Anduin clearly finds this adorable about him. 

They are cute together. 

Cute enough that I can actually almost…nope. No, I’m still mad about the army.

However, Prince Wrathion, despite his new-found horror and no doubt source for nightmares, was quick to rescind his orders to Nicholas, that involved killing any and all black dragons that weren’t him.

Oh, fun fact: I'm a terrible rogue.

Nicholas has literally been following us since Gadgetzan. He was traveling with the princes, wouldn't you know? He's been with our group the _whole_ damned time, and I never picked up on him being around. Never picked up on his daggers’ magic. I literally see magic and yet I didn’t…

Not even once. 

Also, apparently one does not get to kick the ass of someone who works for princes. They're special or something stupid like that.

This part requires a tiny bit of explanation, so let me backtrack a little.

I guess after Bree and I knocked out the princes and made our escape, the princes decided to go to the one person I'd said was trying to stop me to see if they could figure out what was really going on. So they went to Nicholas—who was not dutifully guarding the stairs they’d told him to and instead searching the castle for me—and he told them what little he knew—probably painting me as some crazy person, to be honest—and then they decided they wanted to find me.

The princes weren't even set on stopping me, per se. They just wanted to find me and see what was really going on.

Because they were bored.

They’re so used to the world ending all the time that when they have some downtime, they just don’t know what to do with themselves.

To clarify that, they sent a damned army after me because they were _bored_. 

I will never let that go, if you're wondering. On my death bed, my dying words will probably be something about those stupid princes and their army. Assuming I have a deathbed, of course. 

Dear God, I’m not gonna have one of those, am I? With all the fighting and getting tangled in crazy plots and everything that I do… I’m gonna die in a ditch somewhere or an enemy base or… something.

Holy crap.

…

The terror of my own mortality and possibility of dying in a ditch somewhere where no one will ever be able to find me notwithstanding, I actually managed to keep my cool through everything that’s happened.

And, like I said, quite a bit did happen.

Most of it wasn’t what I would have liked, though. For starters, I would have enjoyed tying Nicholas up and… I don't know, tossing him in the ocean for trying to murder my boyfriend.

Did not happen. 

After Miloren threatened to shoot someone if we didn't remember that we weren't alone—she said she _would_ if any clothes came off, too, and I believe she would have—and Prince Wrathion expressly forbid us from trying to hurt Nicholas—spoiler, I tried to anyway, and it just ended with me having a mouthful of sand and Brath growling at Nicholas to make sure he didn't do anything other than defend himself—it was Fizz who said we needed to stop screwing around and get back on task.

There was a world to save. 

Possibly many.

Nicholas seemed to get oddly quiet at that. 

And then it hit me. 

Nicholas has been following us since Gadgetzan.

How much do you wanna bet he followed me and eavesdropped when I talked to Bree about worlds and time and all that? For all I know, he's the one who told Wrathion about it, the reason that the dragon prince had figured out the timeline thing and all. 

And if he knows the timelines are different, what if he knows about Clara? 

Because his ending in my timeline wasn't a very happy one—I mean, I don't quite know how it ended, to be fair, but still. Losing the only people he ever loved had to be…awful isn’t an adequate word, but…

So then I had to wonder if he would attack us or sabotage our mission or...what.

Speaking of Bree. She was not happy to see Nicholas. At all.

Part of me thought maybe it was because she didn't like getting thrown in a dungeon and all, but that had never really seemed to bother her, you know? I mean, she was already out of her cuffs by the time I got to her and she clearly wasn’t feeling threatened. So... I don't know. It's annoying.

But, this is where things seemed to go to hell.

After Brath and I had reacquainted ourselves for a bit longer than was socially acceptable, and all that, Bree interjected, even as I tried to pull Brath to the side to talk to him about destroying worlds—since that's kind of a deal breaker with a relationship, not gonna lie—to tell us that we needed to go now.

That was when Nicholas decided that he was in charge. I hate that man so much. "If time falls in pieces and we've extended the duration of that timeline's existence, what does it matter if they take a few minutes to talk?" 

"Not that I'm not a fan of sappy reunions," Bree said, hands up and palms out, "but I think I understand time a bit better than everyone else here. So while we may have bought some 'extra time' for you who can't follow it, there is still a limit, and we're cutting it close." 

"Then let's talk to the bronze flight," Nicholas insisted. "They could help us extend time, I'm sure. Unless you're lying about saving all the worlds."

"Of course not." 

"Well, if all the worlds end up fine, that includes Azeroth. The bronze flight would be happy to help," Prince Wrathion interjected, joining Team Not Bree. 

That was a good point. And it stopped both me and Brath, who had been hitherto simply going with whatever Bree said—with paranoia on my end, but still. 

Bree shifted her weight a little. "The spell to talk to the Nothing might do some initial damage to the timeways, but if we can fix things then it will be like that damage was never done." 

"If the end result is a good one, the bronze flight won't mind," Prince Wrathion maintained, that eerie stare of his focused on Bree. I swear it was more intense than usual, and—knowing dragons—he probably did something to make himself look more intimidating. Granted, when you think of what he looks like as a dragon, any semblance of danger kind of flees the mind, but I don't think Bree had ever seen the baby dragon. 

"Unless... There will be potentially dangerous artifacts left over?" Nicholas asked, tilting his head.

"There—" She let out a low curse. "Look, it's time. Time doesn't leave artifacts. It's things not bound by time that will leave them." 

"Like Amy, as she is now." 

I wanted to smack him for bringing me into it. 

And because he was kind of right. Or at least, it seemed it. 

I hate it so much when he’s right. I don’t care if he does have like two decades on me, I hate it when he thinks of things before I do. Especially since I’ve had so much time to think, you know?

Bree frowned. "Amy and Brath _need_ to come with me." 

"Amy," Nicholas said, deciding that Bree was not the one to be talking to. "Did you actually listen to anything she told you?"

"No. I just stood there and daydreamed," I snapped.

"She said Brath and to an extent, you, are the reason _her_ world is on the brink of dying." 

Even as I glanced toward Fizz and the others, wondering just how they'd take that little detail that I'd chosen to leave out, Brath seemed to stop, brow furrowing. Had she just not told him that, too?

Great.

Do I have to be the one to explain to Brath that apparently he’s evil…er than we thought?

Nicholas kept talking. "I don't know about you, but if I could pinpoint the person or people who had endangered or destroyed my world, I sure wouldn't be offering to help them find happiness." 

"It... If we can fix things, no one has to be hurt. Her world included. It’ll be like it never happened," I objected.

"When is that ever true?" Nicholas asked.

He knows. He knows about Clara.

He has to, right?

"I'm not sure why she wants you going into the timeways, but I very truly _doubt_ it is to save you or your world. Think about it. With the way she talks about time, how much do you want to bet her world will be an artifact?" 

"Would you...shut...up!" 

When I looked back at Bree, she was barely managing to keep her face from contorting into pure rage. Her whole body was rigid and her hands were clenched shut at her sides. She’d closed her eyes for a minute before opening them again and looking at me. “Amy, I have helped you every step of this journey since we met. What has he done other than tell you you’re wrong and that your world either isn’t worth saving, or that it just can’t be done?”

If I’d never have remembered my original timeline, I would have agreed with her. However, as much as I can’t stand him, Nicholas is a hero. He did step up for my world, when there was a way to it. Even if the odds were slim, he crossed worlds and helped in the fight.

In this timeline, he honestly thinks it’s a fool’s errand, but if I could prove him wrong, he _would_ help.

I know he would.

“Nicholas is just worried,” I found myself saying. I could feel the bile in my gut as I added, “Despite everything he’s…pretty level headed.” I looked back at him. “My world was saved once. It can be again. We just have to talk to the Nothing.”

“How do you know they’ll listen?”

“They won’t if I don’t at least try,” I argued.

“Alright, then let’s go to the bronze flight. There have to have been possible timelines where Azeroth and such creatures crossed paths. Nozdormu has to have heard of the Nothing.”

“We can’t trust that he’ll have _our_ best interests at heart,” Bree protested, walking up and gripping my arm. “We can’t go to them.”

“Amy, you’ve been merged with magic, you know this world. We can rely on the aspects to help us,” Nicholas pressed, eyes never leaving me.

They were both trying to sway me to their side, and both sides made sense, I guess. Finally, I shook my head, looking at Bree. “If all the worlds end up fine, then we _should_ go to Nozdormu. Who knows? He might even have a way to talk to the Nothing that doesn’t involve possibly messing up the timeways to begin with. We could save ourselves a lot of trouble.”

With an approving nod that made me wanna smack him, Nicholas motioned with a hand toward the way we’d come. “Let’s go see the dragons, then.”

“You…” Bree still stood where she was, hands still clenched, empty gaze locked on Nicholas. You could feel it, the tension, the anger. “You just couldn’t…leave it alone.”

I didn’t hear what Nicholas said in response, but it was the wrong thing.

Bree lunged at him with such force. Like, shit. I didn't think anyone could move that fast. It was like she wasn't even corporeal. Like she was just a shadow.

…

Like the things that had attacked Miloren and me in the crater. 

A lot of things happened at once. Mostly it was yelling. Lots and lots of yelling.

And weapons being drawn or magic being tapped into.

I couldn't tell you any one thing that happened, really. Any one thing that was said. I moved to try to protect Brath when shadows came out of nowhere, but beyond that everything was just too chaotic.

What I _can_ tell you is that, at the end of it, Bree was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> This month is going to be pretty terrible for updates. Plus, I'm going to be out of town from the 16th to the 23rd. If I don't get another update in this week, expect one on the 24th!


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